Through the Valley of Shadows
by RedxMoonxRose
Summary: You've heard this story a million times over, and it is always the same. There's a woman. She somehow wakes up in Middle-Earth, boys like her, everyone wants to kill her, things get dicey. But she's got the entire story in her head, she knows everything that is about to happen, and she has no intention of allowing things to happen the way they're "supposed" to.
1. Fánaí

**Expanded Summary: **You've heard this story a million times over, and it is always the same. There's a woman. She somehow wakes up in Middle-Earth, boys like her, everyone wants to kill her, things get dicey. But she's got the entire story in her head, she knows everything that is about to happen, and she has no intention of allowing things to happen the way they're "supposed" to.

Now throw in the fact that she can't speak a lick of Common, because it isn't English despite what others might think, and she does things that should be impossible and moves like she was made for battle. Throw in some time travel, plots that stretch back thousands of years, ample sass, somewhat meddling Gods, and what we have is (hopefully) a different tale to the one that you're used to it.

The premiss of the story might be the same, but shake enough trees and stamp on enough butterflies and things aren't going to end up the same way as one would expect them to.

**Rating: **E. Seriously, things are going to get dark. Do not even begin to read until you have read every tag and understand what is going to be in this story. I do not want to trigger people, so those tags are there for a purpose. The chapters that those tags are for are going to be labelled in the notes, but still.

**Tags: **Modern Girl in Middle Earth, Sort Of, Foreknowledge, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Time Travel, Sass, Banter, Seriously OP main character, Sorry Not Sorry, Self-Insert/OC – Freeform, More OC Than Self-Insert, this is my sandbox, Main Character Adapts Fast, And Is Really Good With Animals, and fighting, Stole Some Shit From The Middle-Earth Games, Original Character(s), Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Past Rape/Non-con, Magic, Magical Tattoos_ (more tags will be added as the story progresses)._

**Author's Note: **Hi. Yes, it's happened again. Another SI/OC fic. I love these things far too much to stop. It's also in my favourite ever series, so this is my baby. The story I keep coming back to when I'm meant to be doing other things. Also, I want to say early on that while I _love _Tolkien's work, I have also been _heavily_ influenced by other things. Characters are going to look different; I've made up lore, and things are going to be different because of the latter.

* * *

**Through the Valley of Shadows**

**Chapter One  
Fánaí  
**_wandering_

**(Thursday the 25****th**** of July, 2019. County Wicklow, Ireland.)**

**It **had rained all day, a warm summer rain that spilt over the gutters in quicksilver sheets. Clarissa Ryder opened the kitchen window just a few inches, breathing in the refreshing scent of the Scots pines that surrounded the land as it filled the room. She listened to the rumbles of thunder in the distance, rainfall pattering on the roof a continuous murmur in the background. In the back yard beneath the elder tree was a widening pool, droplets dimpling the surface and rippling outward.

All the afternoon's heat had been washed away, and it was cool for late July. She searched the hall closet for her grandmother's pastel woven throw, wrapping it around her shoulders and bunching it up in the middle so that it didn't drag across the floor as she made her way back into the kitchen.

She filled the kettle and set it on the stovetop, the gas burner roaring to life with the click of a knob. The farmhouse she called home had little to no electrical appliances. There were the basic essentials that one needed to survive and then the old, big-bodied television and video player that sat in the living room, but that was about it for modern things.

As a child, the world contained within the box had been fascinating to her, so very different from the world she knew.

While most children would be in school or playing with their friends, she would spend her days in the garden, either identifying what kinds of roots could be used in place of rubbing alcohol to prevent infection or what she could eat until she found food. She learnt that while honeysuckle berries were poisonous, the blossoms were edible. Not that that had stopped her from ever eating toxic things, she just usually ate them under the watchful eye of her mother.

At eight years old, most children would be in primary school, while she was at home, building a tolerance to poison.

Leaning against the kitchen counter, she stared out of the window that faced the backyard. Rain dripped from the roof above, streaking the windowpane in endless wet tracks. It distorted the familiar view; all the colours mingled like the brush strokes of an oil painting. Dark green leaves framed the sky, the clouds a swirling mist above. She could see the hollyhocks that grew around the back porch blowing with the breeze, the mountainous backdrop covered in wildflowers.

Clarissa smiled, a small, sad smile as her eyes fell upon the large blooming elder tree that stood in the middle of the field.

It had been growing on the family land decades, planted by her great-great-great-grandmother. And, while her mother had tended to all the flowers and crops she grew with love and care, the tree had always been specially tended to as if something precious. Clarissa had taken over its care now and found her often wondering who would care for it when she left. Old man Jenkins had little family left; he wouldn't be able to care for it much longer in her absence.

In the shadows the tree cast, Clarissa could almost see her mother sitting there, book in hand. Sometimes instead of a book, it would be her flute, violin, or guitar. Her mother loved music, as Clarissa herself did. The radio would always be playing, filling the house with songs from the world over.

Still, the tree hadn't felt the same to her since her mother's passing, despite its everlasting beauty. They called it the Twilight tree, for the way that its leaves glistened like stars under nightfall. Clarissa had never seen another tree like it despite her travels, but still, it didn't feel the same.

A cluster of dandelions were growing in the partial shade, where her mother always used to sit. Most people would see dandelions as a weed that signalled that it was time to cut their lawn, but her mother had taught her from an early age the importance of flora. It was not only for their medicinal benefits or the beauty of them, but for their magical properties as well.

When her mother had first pointed them out to her, she had explained how the bloomed yellow flowers would close themselves uptight and turn into the white puff seed head that would continue to spread its life elsewhere. _"Birdie", _she would always say, _"close your eyes and make a wish. If you can blow all the seeds away in one breath, your wish will come true."_

Till this day, Clarissa still made wishes on dandelions, but her only desire was to have her mother back.

The kettle interrupted her thoughts, and she turned from the window to take it from the oven top before its high-pitched whistle became unbearable. She let the tea steep, cupping her hands around the sides of her favourite, slightly cracked, Eeyore mug for warmth.

With her mother gone, the house felt too empty. She missed hearing the sounds of her mother humming as she worked, and the only noise at night was the creaking of the house as it settled. Not even the time she spent tending the gardens could fill all the hours, and the weekends last forever.

Clarissa blew on her tea to cool it_. 'Enough with the moping.'_

Tonight, she'd cook soup for dinner, something nice and simple. She'd watch some of her favourite films curled up on the couch, and read until she fell asleep. She wouldn't even go upstairs to bed. The couch was comfortable enough, and more importantly, the living room was where all her bags currently were.

She walked to the couch with her mug of tea in hand, settled herself on the cushioned seats and rested her head against the back. She'd been home for a little more than two weeks by this point, and as the days passed her by, she grew increasingly anxious. Her skin tingled at the slightest of movements, and she knew it was to happen soon. With a sigh, she placed her mug down and leant forward, rubbing at her head, at the growing headache that had been developing the past two days.

"Yeah," she muttered, "soon."

A few hours later Clarissa was wrapped under her mother's throw with a bowl of potato and leek soup as she watched Sarah Williams proclaim, _"It isn't fair!"_ as she finally realised someone had been changing her marks around. She hadn't watched _Labyrinth _in a few years now, not since she was six and back then, the creatures of the Goblin King's Labyrinth had been terrifying to her. Now, she found that she thought they were quite adorable in a strange way, like she considered new-borns to be.

The cause of this change had probably been due to the fact that some of her mother's other fantasy films had had goblins that were far more terrifying in them. And spiders, for that matter. She had quite liked spiders before she had sat down to watch _The Lord of Rings: The Return of the King _for the first time that is. Shelob's terrifyingly huge form had destroyed anything she had ever liked about the creatures, and now she found herself shying away from even the smallest one, as if they were about to turn around and snack on her.

Clarissa shook her head, smiling in amusement as she found herself thinking of what her mother's favourite series had been. Whilst she had loved all kinds of fantasy movies, Emelia Ryder had been completely obsessed with the series by Tolkien, and the films by Peter Jackson, passing that very same obsession onto her daughter. The mother-daughter pair had soaked in every piece of knowledge they could get their hands on about the series. They knew the timeline like the back of their hands. They had spent hours pondering over maps as they planned their imaginary adventures out together. Clarissa could tell anyone who asked just about anything about the world of Arda.

Her mother enjoyed cooking, so she would always end up cooking up a feast each time they sat down to watch or read the series again—a meal for each of the seven hobbit meals. Considering that they usually ended up doing that several times a month, Clarissa was rather glad she was as active as she was, or she could have gained quite the number of pounds.

Raising her mug to her lips, she drank her fourth cup of tea. The last time she had actually read or watched anything about Middle-Earth, however, was four years ago. It had been the last night she had spent in the company of her mother, who had wanted to rewatch the series that one last time before she died. They had managed to watch all the way up until Frodo attempted to leave for Mordor on his own before Clarissa had to then watch as her mother faded away. She hadn't touched the books or the films since. Couldn't bring herself to.

She had ended up burying her mother deep in the woods, where she had then built a cairn of stones over the grave and planted seeds of moonflowers around it. Over the last few years, they bloomed beautifully. She hoped they made her mother happy wherever she was. Moonflowers had always been her favourite.

The tingling sensation she had been feeling all week intensified, pulling her from memories of the past, and her body went rigid as the feeling surged through her body. A dull ringing began to echo in her ears. She stared at the multitude of shadows that slowly begun to surround her from all sides, seemingly appearing from nowhere and everywhere at once. She had never been afraid of the dark as a child, had never been afraid of it as she grew older. She had always been afraid of what lurked in the darkness of the shadows.

Shadow Walkers thrived in the shadows, but so did others.

Pain suddenly erupted from her temples, and she gasped sharply as the world seemed to tilt, turn and twist all at once. Her mug tumbled from her grasp, shattering into a million tiny pieces across the floor, the tea slowly sinking into the gaps between the wooden planks. Adrenaline pulsated through her veins at an almost impossible rate and her body began to convulse as the air around her rippled, turning sharp and frigid.

She ground her teeth together, pushing past the pain as she quickly bent down to grab the handle loops of her bags, which had been tucked under the coffee table waiting for this very moment to finally happen. Once she had stood back up, she was met with a cold, familiar nothingness as the air shuddered around her body.

Cold.

_Cold_—

The shadows compassed her, and the cold lanced through her like a spear, turning her organs and bones to ice. She felt as though she was being ripped apart, shredded bit by bit through time and space. It hurt. It hurt _so much more _than it was supposed to. Something was wrong. Something was different. Agony shot from her chest, travelled down her legs, spread to her brain and her bones and to the very core of her being and she screamed, throat-shredding around the cry.

She screamed, louder and louder, impossibly loud until she was certain that her eardrums were about to rupture. It was a noise beyond sound, like cutting shards of glass. She writhed and thrashed and clawed at the nothingness that held her prisoner, and the sounds that tore from her were no longer human, no longer possible, and she could almost swear the very air shook from the force of her cries.

And then it abruptly stopped.

She fell out of the sky—or, no. Not the sky, not really. She fell from about ten feet in the air and landed stomach first onto hard rock. It knocked the wind out of her, leaving her gasping as she tried desperately to gather up the air that her body was being deprived of. She sobbed uncontrollably, echoes of sharp pain flittering through her like bundles of white-hot razor blades, and she could feel her muscles twitch and spasm and contract around them.

Clarissa allowed herself to cry for a while, emptying her body of the torment it had endured, before then she crushed down the shard of panic within her and compartmentalized, putting it away for later. She couldn't allow herself to panic. Panic ruined her ability to think clearly and lead her astray too often for her to allow it to grow.

She needed a clear mind, a calm mind.

Her surroundings had then begun to sink in, and Clarissa found that she was in a cave. Dim light streamed in from a small jagged opening in the ceiling, directly above her, and she knew without a shred of doubt that that was where she had fallen through. It was dark otherwise, where the light didn't reach, but she found that she could see into every corner and crack as if the cave was flooded with light. Carefully, she pushed up to a seated position, noticing with no small amount of surprise that the pain was not even a shadow of what it had been when she had first landed. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply to stop herself from spiralling.

When she reopened them, she continued her observation and quickly spotted her bags, which had fallen some feet away from her and pulled herself from the crater in the ground the jump had created. Nothing important seemed to have broken in the fall from what she could gather, but a few of her arrows _had _snapped. She had been running low anyway, after the craziness of an adventure her last jump had turned out to be and had needed to make more, but had always found herself needing to do something else instead.

She adjusted the straps of her rucksack, taking the time to ensure it sat comfortably on her shoulders, in case running occurred. Which it almost always did. She had forever been jealous of the Doctor's bigger on the inside pockets as a child. She then threw the straps of her duffel over the straps of her rucksack, again wishing she didn't need to be carrying so much, but when one lived in the past as much as she did, the contents of her bags were all she had to her name. They were all she had to survive, all she needed really if she thought about it.

Rolling her shoulders back, Clarissa then gently pulled on the silver chain around her neck. Even in the darkness of the cave, the rock attached to it shone in all of its brilliance. It was luminous, with a rainbow ombre of colours contained within it. It had been her mother's before then being passed onto her when she had first begun to jump. She had never managed to find out where her mother had gotten it, had never once gotten a clear answer from the older Shadow Walker as she always been told the same thing, _"Maybe next time, birdie."_

Her mother had never gotten around to telling her before she had died, but Clarissa had expected as much. Her mother had always had her secrets.

Clarissa held the rock out in front of her, using the long length of the chain to her advantage, as she never took the necklace off for anything. Not even to wash. The colours of the rock glimmered brightly across the cave's interior, brightening it just as much, or perhaps even more, than if she had a flashlight or torch in hand.

She followed the tunnel wall towards what she hoped to be the exit, and when she finally saw sunlight streaming in from just around the next corner, she tucked her necklace back beneath the safety of her clothes. Its luminous light disappeared completely, as though it had never existed in the first place.

For a moment, the sudden drastic change from the dim monochrome of the cave was disorienting, and she had to blink her eyes against the sudden brightness as she stepped out from the mouth of the cave. The sunlight and colours were all so bright that it made her think of the time she had stared into the sun for far too long. Her head was suddenly filled with the sounds of streams and a horrible croaking, squawking noise, so loud and clear it was as if reality had doubled over on itself and increased in size.

But, as she took in this, she also realised that she had felt something fundamentally different about this place from the moment she had landed in the cave.

It was the air. It felt almost… alive, and aware.

It brushed up against her like satin, cocooning her, reassuring her. Happy that she had finally acknowledged it. Its presence was like that of a person she'd known and loved and trusted all her life. She felt it standing ready, somehow. Attentive, as if it were holding its breath and waiting on something as it wove around, as natural and normal as the fact that water was wet, and sand was coarse.

Clarissa looked around wide-eyed as if she could see what she was feeling if she just focused enough.

Where_ was _she?

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**Author's Note: **I know this first chapter is slow, but gotta start somewhere right? As you've already seen, Clarissa isn't the typical 'Modern-Girl-In-Middle-Earth' and instead is a Shadow Walker, one who has lived almost eighty per cent of her life in the past. She knows how to survive, she wasn't one to panic much, she adapts quickly. I hope I can do this right, make a realistic character in a fantasy world, but if not, well I'm honestly having fun writing this and that's what should count most right?


	2. Bíonn Siad Ag Seilg Sa Dorchadas

**Author's Note:** This isn't going to be one of those stories where Westron has been magically translated into English. However, since there is a very small amount of information on the exact language, there isn't going to be written dialogue from other characters until Clarissa can actually understand what they are saying either. At that point in the story, then Westron will seem to be English and as much like Tolkien's stories it's been "translated".

**WARNING: **In this chapter, there is attempted rape and mentions of a past rape. It isn't explained in a lot of detail, and the attempted rape doesn't go very far before Clarissa stops it.

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**Through the Valley of Shadows**

**Chapter Two  
****Bíonn Siad Ag Seilg Sa Dorchadas****  
**_they hunt in the shadows_

**(Aldëa the 4****th**** of Lótessë, Third Age 2939. Fangorn Forest, Gondor, Middle Earth.)**

**Clarissa **sat with her back slumped up against a tree trunk, a single foot dangling down from the thick root. Her foot swayed in the air, back and forth, back and forth, much like the thoughts that ran through her head. Her mind itself had never felt so clear, sharp, fast and unclouded, as though she had been used to it being covered by a heavy blanket that had been suddenly removed all her life. Her stomach roiled, and it had nothing to do with any of the things that should have been making her feel ill.

In fact, aside from the whispering coils of what she had forced herself to bury at the cave, she felt only calm, hard focus.

She tilted her head back and glanced through the tree branches at the world that hung above her head. The skies of Ireland had always been a sight to behold—huge open spaces, midnight blue velvet with such bright stars that they seemed reachable, here the stars were even more brilliant, and looked so much closer—but despite how long and hard she looked, she could find none of the constellations that she was used to. She watched the moon as it drifted through the sky like a floating lantern and found herself sinking deeper.

Pressing her chin to her raised knee, she stared out into the darkness of the forest. It was primordial, with centuries-old malady-brown trees with sprawling branches that guarded the darkness, blotting out much of the moonlight and the surrounding night sky. Their bark was mottled and splotched, with clumpy combs of wet moss dangling from their boughs. It was also, save for the wind in the high treetops, almost completely silent, with only a brief croaking, squeak here and there from the flocking crows.

Clarissa sighed and closed her eyes, resting her head against the trunk, the hood of her cloak her only comfort. She breathed in slowly and then exhaled, taking in every little thing she could hear and smell. There were two rivers in the forest, one in the north and another in the south, which was the one she was currently following. She could hear both perfectly however, the streams a murmur in her ear. There were also many animals spread out across the forest, and she could pick out the heartbeats of those some fifty, eighty feet away.

She could smell the muggy earth from the recent rainfall, the faint fading smell of lavender from her hair and even dried dung that had been buried underground. Then there were the things that she couldn't even begin to identify, the things she didn't have names for, much like all the new colours she had been experiencing as of late. When she reopened her eyes, she could see the individual raindrops on the smallest blades of grass and the tiniest bugs that had made their homes in the cracks of bark on the trees.

The first few days had been so overwhelming that it hurt, but she was slowly getting better. Now when she needed to, she simply focused on a little pocket of calm within her, like a pure, steady centre, and eventually, her senses started to adapt and shut everything out until she was ready to ease them back in.

She looked down at the rock she held in her hand, fingers curled back to roll it across her bare palm as she fidgeted. She pursed her lips before then clenching her fingers into a fist. The rock was effortlessly crushed as if it had been nothing more than a clump of sand, and she blew away the fragments of dust that clung to her skin.

Then Clarissa sighed, brushing a hand up her left arm and across the leather bracer that covered her forearm. White whorls and curlicues covered the length of her hand, before then disappearing up her sleeve to cover the rest of her arm. What was visible gleamed faintly and even though it looked as though it had been carved into her very skin, it was neither tattoo nor scar; her mother had had similar markings on the left side of her body like all Shadow Walkers before them.

Out of the corner of her eye, Clarissa could see one of the crows perched up in a nearby tree. It seemed to be staring at her, eyes filled with a level of intelligence she wouldn't expect from it. It seemed to not only be staring at her but now that she really looked at it, it also seemed to be watching her every move. Just what she needed, carrion birds watching her.

The crow stared at her for a while, before then turning its head, and opening its beak to let out a loud croaking, squeak that seemed to echo through the forest.

A loud predatorily growl then immediately followed, ripping through the silence of the forest. Clarissa's shoulders stiffened at the noise, her hand automatically dripping into her waistband to pull out one of the daggers she kept hidden there—the dirk—as she jumped to her feet. She curled her fingers around the handle as the crow flew off into the darkness.

Another spine-tingling growl sounded accompanied by several higher-pitched scruffy yelps and she immediately knew what animal was hunting down her scent. Wolves. Or more accurately, what sounded like a mama wolf and her cubs, which was even more dangerous. There was nothing more dangerous than a mama protecting her children and it triggered her fight-or-flight response as she didn't want to have to kill them if she didn't have to, but she also didn't want to be hunted through the forest.

"Fuck é." She ran.

She leapt over the enormous roots of the trees and ducked under their drooping branches. The quiver that dangled slightly behind her right hip jolted around, rattling the arrows inside of it, and her rucksack thumped against her back every time she jumped, and all Clarissa could think was that she was so glad she had decided to empty out her duffel the day before. Now everything that had been inside of it was on her person, ready for her to use, and the duffel itself had been folded up and shoved into one of the rucksack's side pockets.

_'That crow couldn't have-' _she weaved around a tree that had planted itself in the middle of her path. _'Crows are smart, but not _that _smart.' _

She ran so fast that the world around her seemed a blur, but no matter how fast she went or how hard she pumped the muscles of her legs, the thundering footfalls of the beast chasing her didn't let up, and howls pierced the night. Thunder then boomed across the skies and Clarissa almost tripped in her surprise as the clouds coloured with flashes of lightning as they split open and drenched the earth below. She ran lightly across the muddy ground and her balance didn't waiver once despite the increasing instability.

It was almost as though she was floating just above it.

None of that mattered, however, for one moment the path in front of Clarissa was clear, and the next a giant beast that was not a wolf was in front of her. She came to a stop, steel-toed boots sliding across the ground. The beast was closer to the size of a horse than it was to an actual wolf and its cubs were the size of small dogs. But what terrified Clarissa more than the enormous beast that had launched itself up on top of a large rock before her, snarled teeth glistening in the light of the moon, was the hideous monster sat atop it, axe in hand.

Shock coloured her mismatched irises a wary black as she stared at its wrinkled grey face, rotted broken teeth pulled back into a lascivious grin and slanted yellow eyes filled with such vile intent of which she saw through her own green left eye that it made bile fill her throat.

Clarissa knew this monster and despite everything within her saying that it wasn't possible for it to exist, there it stood.

The beast—warg—growled menacingly, snapping her teeth and her cubs followed in suit, albeit slightly weaker. Clarissa kept her focus on the creature—orc—atop it. One look away, one wrong step and either one would kill her before she had even had the chance to blink. She was used to men and creatures, not demons and monsters.

"**Golugniz glob."**

Clarissa choked on a deranged laugh as the guttural sound of Black Speech washed over her. Then she went very still. The language in itself made her feel nothing, not so much as a shiver down her spine, but what had forced a reaction was what the orc had said, for she understood every single word of it. She had spent, so many weeks hunched over so much source material for so many different languages both fictional and not that it made her head spin to think of them all.

'_I'm not an-'_

'_It's not possible.'_

No.

Suddenly it was difficult to breathe.

She roughly tightened her grasp on her Scottish dirk, just enough to give herself something physical to focus on, something real and solid. She felt as though she was coming apart at the seams, and if she could only just find something to hold herself together long enough, it would stop. She didn't feel her ears, looking for pointed tips, for proof of what the orc had said. She didn't have to, nor did she want to. But now that she was aware of them, she realised that her ears were unusually sensitive.

What other obvious things had she not noticed? She was the proverbial fish ignorant of the water it lived in. It had taken a _warg _for her to realise that she was no longer on Earth. It had taken an _orc _for her to realise that she was no longer human. She had had an answer for almost all her questions sat on the side of her head for days now and she hadn't even noticed.

The warg made a show of eyeing her and Clarissa realised that there were more important things to be focusing on. She could… could logically think about this later. When there weren't demon wolves and a foot soldier of evil overlords staring at her as though she was a piece of jerky they just couldn't wait to bite into. Meat was back on the menu. She was it.

Suddenly the orc dismounted, and the warg took a bounding leap at such lightning speed that Clarissa didn't have time to react before blinding, white-hot pain spread across her arm and she cried out, the dirk slipping from her fingers. Teeth tore and shredded through leather, cloth and skin, crushing bone. It then tossed her to the ground, and she landed on her side, slamming her arm beneath her weight. Involuntary tears of pain prickled at her eyes and she quickly swallowed them back with a strangled choking gasp.

The multitude of shadows around her grew bigger, thicker, and far more menacing than she had ever seen them before from within the darkness of the forest. Like an instinct or reflex, the life in the air moved around her, pushing and pulling and urging her into action as the warg made another move towards her, teeth shining with her blood.

As the warg shot towards her and thunderstruck in the nearby distance, Clarissa grabbed the dirk she had dropped and stabbed it up into the warg's unprotected mouth just as razor-sharp teeth were about to tear her head clean off her shoulders. The beast roared in agony and raised herself one last time before collapsing, dead.

The orc stared at the dead warg in indifference before then looking towards one of her cubs, who had slowly made its way near the body and began to snuffle and cry as it nudged the corpse with its snout. The sounds it made twisted at Clarissa's heart, but she could do nothing as the orc brought his axe down on the cub, concaving its skull.

She flinched at the sound it made, and her eyes unconsciously flickered over to the last surviving cub. It stood motionless in the back, eyes fixated on the corpses of its mother and sibling, but it made no noise. If she wasn't able to hear the clench and release of its heartbeat, it would seem almost as though it was a statue.

A heart-breaking statue, but a statue none the less, and she was the reason behind it.

Clarissa's eyes focused back on the orc and she glared at him through the ice-cold blue of her right eye as words spat from his mouth. It sounded like Black Speech but none of the words he was saying were familiar to her. None of it was orcish, none of it was the Black Speech she knew, but it rolled just as harshly and cruelly off his tongue.

"**Grohhyg'daz y zambarzmÿÿvnyz zörghzÿÿr öẗḧ dyzuhrüz nyzzuv urzabgakh gyz häzbgaz øẗhbüghdaz? Uanr'daz öthnyz dyzdrärgäkhnyz otḧüth uanr bgazburddaz, U'maaz zubbhak dazduvz ruzvybv grohruth nyzzuv yuth nuzzär U'öth urzzüürd, U'maaz grohghür nyzärrz ghürdaz dyzuhrüz anrguhrmyrb baazbhäk öthnyz durgrhÿgḧ."**

She didn't need to understand the language to understand what he was saying, however. Not with the way he licked his lips afterwards, lustful eyes scanning over her frame. He pointed the axe head at her, blood dripping from it to pitter-patter on the mudded forest ground. She stared at him, the hand that held her dirk clenching the upper part of her broken arm.

Then there was a whisper in the air, an eerily chilling voice in her ear as time seemed to slow and thunder cracked across the sky. Everything around seemed to come in sharp detail. Clarissa could see every single strand of the warg cub's fur coat. She could see the grains of dirt on the orc's hand, the spin of tissue in his iris. She knew just exactly how much give the ground under her had and the direction of the wind and the chance she'd slip if she moved that little bit too fast.

In the same moment she took all this in, her muscles twitched. She felt a pull to move without thought. It all played out in her head like a movie—

_(The orc yanks on her left upper arm, she lets him simply to get him close, and when he goes to pull her to his chest she spins away, using the momentum to hug around his form and get behind him. She is too fast to give him time to react before one sharp jab into the side of the temple makes him fall to the ground, black blood bleeding into the ground. He won't have the chance to touch her again.)_

It all happened before the orc's next footfall had hit the ground, and she was so stunned that she nearly lost her footing when he practically barrelled into her and clamped his hand around her upper arm, yanking her towards him, chest on chest. His scent washed over her and it made her stomach turn. He then grabbed her broken arm, twisting it around and against her back. She forced herself not to cry, refusing to give him that fascination. Her dirk was ripped away and thrown into the darkness of the forest.

Then before she knew what was happening, Clarissa was shoved face-first into a nearby tree, being pinned against it by the weight of the orc. Her broken arm was pinned above her head and she could feel the individual broken shards grind against each other. Sharp claws dug into her belt, ripping the quiver from her waist and then she heard the orc begin to undo his breeches. She tried to force herself to stay calm, to keep a level head even as her mind started to panic as it was thrown fourteen years into the past.

She had been so small and inexperienced then, just a twelve-year-old girl too over her head. Seven against one. She had never stood a chance, despite how hard she fought. She had managed to get them all in the end, however. Hunted them down like the pigs they were and ignored however much they had begged and pleaded for her to stop. They hadn't stopped once when she had done the same, so neither did she. They had thought themselves wolves in the beginning. In the end, they were the prey, she the predator.

Suddenly, her world folded in on itself and become one of hyper-focus. _She _was the predator, not the prey. She had sworn to herself that day that she wouldn't let anyone make her feel that way again, to make her feel that powerless and helpless. She forced on that one thing, that promise to herself, and felt the shadows wrap around her in kind. She felt more than heard the orc as he stopped in his traces, his breaches now around his ankles and his claws digging into the material of her leggings. Confusion rippled off him in waves. She… she _smiled._

It was a smile of snow; soft, and gentle, and ice_. _

In one rapid succession, she snapped her head back, connecting with the orc's nose in the exact same moment her leg shot back, the heel of her boot mercilessly crushing the unprotected flesh that hung from between his thighs. He howled and momentarily released his hold on her broken arm for a split second. It was all she needed. She spun around, using the momentum to hug his form and get behind him, just like she had seen in her head. As he turned to face her, she thrust the tightened knuckles of her hand into his throat with as much force as she could manage, crushing his larynx and leaving him unable to breathe.

He dropped like wet paper as he grabbed his neck as if trying to remove an invisible garrotte wire. His eyes bulged as his face slowly turned red, and then purple. He was slowly choking to death, and she didn't think she had ever seen an orc look as vulnerable as the one before her did in that exact moment.

Clarissa ran fingers through white-blonde hair wet from the hammering rainfall as the orc slammed into the ground, lifeless. She felt disoriented like her mind wasn't keeping up with the rest of her and the pain of her broken arm no longer registered. She couldn't feel much of anything, now that she thought about it.

Her gaze left the dead creature at her feet, and she went to trace the ground in the direction of where the orc had thrown her dirk. At this rate, she would have to attach it to her with some kind of rope. It had been removed from her person twice in one night. She rubbed her right wrist, fingers brushing her bracers, and Clarissa absentmindedly registered the fact that she had many more weapons hidden away on her person. She blew air through her nose, lips narrowed into a thin line, as she picked it off the ground and shoved it into her waistband.

She then began to reattach her quiver to her belt and peered over her shoulder and the top of her rucksack, towards the direction the cub still stood.

'_Can't leave it here.'_

'_I mean, could, but.'_

She felt something tug at her from within her chest and she chewed on her bottom lip as she stared at the miniature beast. Eyes of sunset orange stared into her very soul. She turned her head away, a strange weight in her stomach as she sat down against a tree trunk nearby to where the cub was. It was no longer staring at the corpses of its family, but her. Clarissa tried to ignore it as she slowly removed the leather bracer on her right arm, whining quietly at the sting as it unpeeled from her skin. Her forearm was covered in blood and the wound itself covered it in its entirety, large teeth marks going from one side to the other. It was definitely going to leave a scar, no matter how she tried to tend to it.

The only other scars she had were the ones that littered her hands in faint white lines.

She sighed as she bent her other arm backwards, reaching towards one of the side pockets of her rucksack for the little wooden box of medical tools she kept there. A familiar tingling sensation running up her arm, however, made her freeze in her tracks. She glanced down at the mess that was her arm and swallowed, her breath quivering slightly as she exhaled. Black tendrils of misty shadows were slowly forming around her forearm, wrapping over and under the wound. She watched as the blood then… simply vanished from sight.

Something blue out of the corner of her eye called for her attention, and Clarissa slowly raised her other arm. Once white markings were now _lightning blue__. _She stared at the sight before her like a fish out of water as the massive wound that had once covered her broken arm disappeared, leaving nothing behind save for a scar that looked like it had healed years ago and not seconds. The tendrils then slowly began to fade from sight and the blue that filled her markings followed suit, leaving familiar white in its place.

She clenched her fist and found that what had once been broken was now… _not. _

"Brackium Emendo?" she croaked, for she didn't know how else to respond. What even were the marking on her arm? They had never done anything like this before. Was it because she was on Arda, the place where magic lived in the very air? _'Were...'_ she paused for a moment. _'Were Shadow Walkers originally from Arda?'_

In the exact same moment that that thought ran through her head, the ground beneath her feet began to shake and move as though it was about to split open. Clarissa shot to her feet and backpedalled away from the tree, carefully placing her feet so that she didn't slip on the mud. The entire tree was moving. The tree was _moving._

The unwinding of branches stopped after a moment and Clarissa was faced with…. a face.

_"Onodrim,"_ the Sindarin word tumbled from her mouth automatically, as she stared wide-eyed at the shepherd of trees that stared back at her.

The ent's eyes slowly went over her form, over the healed arm at her side and the warg cub that had run to her side to the markings on her other arm that glimmered in the dark. Then it—he—looked back up at her and Clarissa didn't know what he saw before his mouth slowly opened and a deep, woody voice came out that echoed through her bones.

_"Yucalëedur."_

And all Clarissa could think to say in reply to what she had just witnessed, all that ran through her head was—

"You're late to the party."

* * *

**Author's Note: **Yes, I gave Clarissa a warg cub. Fight me. I love them, giant demonic overgrown wolves that they are. I blame my bestie as well, she said "hell yes" when I asked if Clarissa should have a warg. She also called them "evil doggo things" when I asked if she remembered them so.

Anyway, I don't know why that orc was in Fangorn Forest here and now, but I needed something to drive in the fact that Clarissa wasn't on Earth anymore. Humans don't work, they haven't been in the forest for centuries and the ents weren't waking up for much else. So, as realistic as I could make it, I guess? We are fairly close to Mordor and the Misty Mountains, like in the middle. Maybe the crebain told it. Bastard crows. I also find it ironic that Clarissa knows more Black Speech than she does Common. It amuses me far too much.

The 'Black Speech' I used for the orc's second line of dialogue came from a translator I found online, made by someone called Dugi. It was taking far too long to find the words I needed for the sentence, and most of the words I wanted I couldn't find, so I just ended up using their translator. Think of this 'Black Speech' as another debased version of the original.

**Irish**  
Fuck é : fuck it

**Black Speech**  
Golugniz glob : female elf filth

**'Debased' Black Speech**  
What's a pretty little elf like you doing in these woods? It's my lucky night it seems, I'll have some fun with you and once I'm done, I'll wear your ears like teeth around my neck

**Sindarin  
**Yucalëedur : servant of twilight


	3. Duine Inti Féin Í

**Author's Note: **I cannot thank everyone enough for the kind support this story is already receiving!

* * *

**Through the Valley of Shadows**

**Chapter Three  
****Duine Inti Féin Í****  
**_she's a lost soul_

**(Valanya the 7****th**** of Lótessë, Third Age 2939. Fangorn Forest, Gondor, Middle Earth.)**

**As** a child, she would often have the same recurring dream, but not in the same sense as in it was a singular dream that kept repeating and repeating, but in the sense that it often picked up right after the last dream had ended. She dreamed it so often that she dreamed about it while awake, eyes glazed over at the breakfast table and her head in the clouds.

She would dream about jumping to Arda almost every single night.

Sometimes she would be slaying beasts with the Rangers of the North or having tea with her favourite hobbits in Bag End. She'd read all the books in Imladris and somehow convince Glorfindel to tell her all his tales, of how he killed the Balrog and all the things he did after. She'd learn history from those who were there and take in all the languages Arda had to offer.

There was no place she didn't end up going to. She'd cling to the shadows as she stalked through Mordor's landscape, avoiding orcs, caragors and ghûls by the skin of her teeth. She'd learn how to craft and smith from the dwarves of the Misty Mountains and somehow get one of the wizards, usually Gandalf or Radagast, to teach her a little bit of magic.

She had even dreamt about the two trees of Valinor before Melkor and Ungoliant had destroyed them.

But that was all it had ever been to her. A dream, something she imagined and thought about but _knew _could never happen because, despite however much she might have wished for it, Arda was simply not real. It was an imaginary world with imaginary people and imaginary languages. She could dream and wish all she wanted to, but it would never become real.

Or, at least, that was what she had once told herself.

Clarissa stared, her fingers tightening slightly around the metal of her compact mirror.

She almost didn't recognise the girl that stared back at her. Slightly wavy white-blonde hair fell past her hips, pulled loose from its braids, and damp from the continuous rainfall that plagued the forest. She traced over sharp cheekbones with her eyes, the defined jaw and neck, fine nose, and full lips with their pronounced cupid's bow. She then stared into the reflection of the one thing that was immediately familiar—a left green eye, a right blue and the tiny little flecks of silver scattered throughout them like stardust.

Her eyes.

It was her. She was different, but she was still her.

Clarissa brushed nimble fingers across her face, feeling the sudden softness of it before then slowly reaching up to brush her hair away from her ears. Elegant ears, long and pointed, greeted her once again. She trailed a finger across the edge, feeling the warm flesh that told her they were real, that they weren't fake.

Once jumping to Arda had been a dream, a dream that had somehow become her new reality, however, she had never once dreamt of being an elf.

She inhaled harshly, snapping the mirror shut before throwing it back into her backpack. It made a faint clattering noise as it bounced off the other things the bag contained but she couldn't find it in herself to care if the mirror or anything else got damaged or broke. Anger boiled in her blood even as tears began to wet the corners of her eyes.

The ent she had awoken was called Fallelm. He was grumpy, easily annoyed by her many questions, but he answered them all the same. He had been asleep for some time, so he didn't know much of what had happened since he was awake last, nor what year it was, but he did know a thing or two about the people he named the servants of twilight—Yucalëedur.

The name had come from a Shadow Walker, the daughter of the very first one, who had walked the earth for many an era changing the lives of everyone she met. Apparently, despite the colour differences, Clarissa was an exact image of the Shadow Walker once known as Elvëien Yucalëedur, ears and all. Shadow Walkers were never fully one race or another, always had a little bit of something _else _but from what Fallelm knew from the last time he was awake there had also never been one that had been born without elven blood either.

While the shadows cloaked her hröa_, _magic consumed her fëa and together they made up the pieces of what made her what she was, and while she might have had a mortal body, she had never once had a mortal soul. In that sense, Clarissa had never truly been human, if she had ever been human, to begin with.

Fallelm was very clear in his opinion on that matter.

Still didn't mean that she agreed with it, even as the bitterness in her chest grew and grew with each word he spoke. In Sindarin and Quenya, of course, because Clarissa couldn't string together proper sentences with her limited Common knowledge, could barely ask the name of a river, let alone ask anything else more important.

The river she had been following was called Onodló—Entwash. Trust her to land in one of the more dangerous forests around. If only she had landed in Bindbole wood.

She closed her eyes, pressed her face into the fabric of her leggings, and found herself overwhelmed with memories of her mother.

_(Her mother's hair was such a beautiful shade of red, when she had been younger Clarissa had called it fire, a shade she had apparently inherited from both her redheaded parents. Clarissa had never seen pictures of either of her grandparents, only heard of her grandfather's curly red hair and bright green eyes, her grandmother's coppery red and grey. _

_She remembered always loving to play with her mother's hair, finding herself wishing a lot of the time that hers was the same colour. She remembered once brushing her small fingers across her mother's ears accidentally and the giggle that escaped her. "Mama's ears are sensitive, birdie, careful." Mama's ears were sensitive. Mama's ears also pointed out._

_It wasn't a long point. In fact, it was barely noticeable at all and completely unnoticeable if her hair was covering them. Her mama had natural elf ears however, small as they might be, and she remembered how upset she had been when she touched her own and found no point, just round smoothness. Hadn't noticed the emotions that played across her mother's face._

_Sorrow and _Guilt.

_Sometimes she knew that she was being lied to, whenever she found it in herself to ask her mother questions. Who was her father? Did he know about her, didn't he want her? Why wasn't he there with them, living together as a family like the ones she saw in movies? Her mother dodged the questions a lot and Clarissa never learnt anything about him aside from two things._

_The first was that her father loved her. _

_The second was that her mother had accidentally jumped while Clarissa was in her arms and had never been able to return to the husband she had left behind. They had been a family once, all smiles and laughter, but something had gone wrong during the jump and all the memories Clarissa had once had slipped through her fingers like smoke. She tried, over and over, to reclaim even the smallest piece but no matter what she tried or what she managed to reclaim, once she went to sleep, it all faded away once more._

_The only thing she ever remembered, the only thing she had ever managed to hold on to was a name._

_Silas.)_

She came back into the world with a start, as a voice echoed through her bones. She tilted her head up and found Fallelm staring back at her. He was crouched down on one knee, bring him much closer to her five-three frame but still so much taller. The smallest elf around, that was her, apparently.

"_Yucalëedur."_

His voice was softer than usual. She realised why when she felt the wetness of her face as silent tears fell. She had pushed the memories of a family she didn't remember so far down that she had completely forgotten that she had even had one _to _forget. That about summed her up, she guessed, always forgetting and never remembering.

Somewhere she had a family.

Clarissa wrapped fingers around the necklace that rested beneath the leather of her bodice, through the fabric of her blouse. Her mother's death had always been a mystery to her. She didn't know what caused it, not really, and all she really knew was that one day her mother had become sick and was never the same again after. But, if what Fallelm told her was right, then… If Fallelm was right and her mother had been an elf, then Clarissa didn't understand why she had become ill in the first place.

Was it the lack of magic on Earth? Could that have been what had killed her and was she really considering the idea that her mother had been lying to her all her life, had hidden part of herself from her? The bitterness in her chest grew and Clarissa chewed on the flesh of her bottom lip.

Fallelm sighed, a deep tired sigh that had him drawing her attention once more. He wasn't looking at her, however, but towards some part of the forest, off in the faint distant. Clarissa tilted her head slightly and listened. One corner of her mouth then turned up in faint amusement as she heard the faint crunch of leaves under small footfalls trying to be stealthy.

She had been in Fallelm's company for three days now, ever since she had gotten him to agree to lead her out of the forest. Her magic—magic she didn't know she had—apparently kept him awake, buzzed in his head like an annoying wasp, and the only thing he wanted to do was go back to sleep. Getting her out of the forest would help.

Neither of them expected the warg cub to try and follow them, however.

Clarissa stared as the warg stumbled over a branch and landed in the clearing she had been sat in for some time now, tripping over his own limbs. He then stood up and shook his body, attempting to shake off the leaves that clung to his fur. Although a wolf, she often found herself comparing him to an adorable, harmless, puppy.

A puppy that would one day grow up into a huge beast.

Fallelm grumbled under his breath, glaring out of the corner of his eye as he shook a leaf-covered limb in the direction of the warg. The warg, in turn, growled in what she imagined he thought was an intimidating way and snapped his teeth at the leaves that came close enough. A few floated down to the ground and Fallelm's face crumpled up into itself and one of his eyes made a few movements that looked like it was twitching. Clarissa couldn't help the way her smile grew as she continued to watch the pair.

Wolves had always been one of her favourites animals and she was fascinated by what differentiated wargs from them. Their sizes were one thing, but she wanted to know more. She wanted to take the warg pup aside and study it for as long as was possible, regardless of the danger she would put herself in.

"Fenrir."

All three of them paused, before Fallelm and the warg's attention turned to her. She hadn't meant to say anything, had only been thinking to herself about all the wolves in stories and mythical she had ever learnt about and the name had simply… tumbled out. But then, she realised that somewhere along the way; she had been calling the warg that exact same name in her head for days now. She couldn't remember when it had happened, or when she had decided to name him, or even how she knew he was a he in the first place.

She stood, brushing off the dirt that clung to her leggings before she then started to walk towards where the warg stood. Once she got close enough, she crouched down to one knee. The warg was staring at her and she could feel that Fallelm was doing the exact same thing. She ignored it all, and instead held a hand out in front of her, palm flattened and pointed up.

Clarissa felt like Harry waiting for Buckbeak to come to him, or Hiccup trying to show Toothless that he could trust him as she closed her eyes and waited.

Fur brushed across the surface of her palm and her eyes slowly opened to find eyes of sunset orange staring back at her, as the warg firmly pressed his head against her hand, nudging it away slightly as he did. That exact same feeling in her chest, the one she experienced the first time she had looked into his eyes appeared again, and she felt something tug, as though it was reaching out for something before then settling after it had found it. Or rather, after it had found him.

She couldn't put into words exactly what she felt in that moment, only that she had never felt anything like it before. She felt… complete in a way, as though a piece of her she had never known about had been missing all this time and she had found it in a little ball of fur that would have no doubt eaten her the first time they had met.

"Fenrir," she said again, eyes twinkling as she smiled.

The warg looked at her, his head cocked to the side, and Clarissa knew that he understood. Somehow, she knew that he would understand everything she said, in the same way, that she somehow knew that she would be able to understand him. They were… connected, were now a piece of each other.

"_Haryalyë yanta."_

She jumped as Fallelm's voice washed over her, having almost completely forgotten about the ent. She turned towards him and saw that he was looking at her and the warg—Fenrir—with a look she couldn't exactly figure out. It was deep, however, and it made him look as old as he no doubt was.

The words rolled around in her head. _'I chose him?' _but then she thought it over and realised that she had done exactly that. She again looked towards Fenrir and found him already looking back at her. She smiled and his tongue immediately drooped down from the corner of his mouth.

She then chewed on the flesh of her bottom lip again as she turned to Fallelm and her head ran through everything he had told her in the short time they had been together. She then shook her head, ignoring the tight feeling that bloomed in her chest. She had a lot of questions that she needed to be answered, and while she had no idea how she would go about getting them, she had a vague idea of who she could go to, to get an idea of where to start.

She just didn't know where she was going to go to find him.

He was called the Wandering Wizard for a reason, after all.

* * *

**Author's Note: **When I was first writing out my ideas for Shadow Walkers, they couldn't do magic. But, the further and further down the rabbit hole I went and the more plot and backstory I added, eventually magic was added onto the list. It isn't magic like in the sense of the wizards, don't worry about that, she isn't going to suddenly be throwing around fireballs and whatnot.

Whenever I tumble down the Modern-Girl-In-Middle-Earth hole, half the stories I came across, the girl almost immediately comes across some knight in shining armour. She's often landed in the Shire or even right outside Lothlórien. I'm already applying clichés to my story, the least I can try is giving Clarissa a different start to Arda. I also originally had Clarissa landing in Trollshaws, but apparently, I don't like her enough to place her there.

Also, I want to just make something clearer for people, when I say SI/OC I mean I put just a little bit of myself in my characters. Some of them love tea, some love thunder. Originally, I was going to have Clarissa as my height, but upon further research realised that that would be dwarf height. I'm four eight, so I've upped Clarissa to five three. Still small but not as small.

**Sindarin  
**Hröa : body  
Fëa : soul**  
**Haryalyë yanta : you have chosen your companion


	4. Throidfeadh Sí, Mar A Throid Sí Cheana

**Author's Note: **We'll see a little of Clarissa's fighting abilities in this chapter. Nothing too major. I'm trying to write her not as a Mary-Sue, so I hope I'm doing that. I also hope that if I'm not, someone would kindly tell me!

* * *

**Through the Valley of Shadows**

**Chapter Four  
Throidfeadh Sí, Mar A Throid Sí Cheana  
**_she'd fight, as she had fought before_

**(Eärenya the 14****th**** of Lótessë, Third Age 2939. Somewhere in Eastern Dunland, Middle Earth.)**

**Clarissa **was in big trouble.

Not the kind of trouble where she had been falsely imprisoned again—using the term falsely loosely, because, she usually was guilty—and shoved into a small stone cell dimly illuminated by torchlights from outside the bars. Her wrists bound together behind her back with rope that scratched and itched, all her belongings removed and taken away to be stored elsewhere. That was the kind of trouble she could get herself out of no problem.

However, this was the kind of trouble where she was stood in front of someone somewhat important-looking, unable to understand a thing that came out of his mouth as he stared in her direction, dark eyes shadowed in smudged kohl. He wore no upper clothing, allowing Clarissa to see all the muscles and scars that covered his upper body, an upper body that was hunched forward, forearms rested against thighs. He also had two braids in his beard, with his hair in an even longer braid that went past his waist.

She would have rather been dangling over a spider pit.

Glancing around the room from the corner of her green eye, she noted the few men that were posted in different parts of the room. There were two on opposite sides of the only door, both equally shirtless with swords at their hips. Another was casually leaning against a support beam cutting an apple up with a knife while the last was glaring at her.

_'If only looks could kill, huh?'_ She stared at the man in faint amusement.

Judging by the fact that she had only just crossed the Fords of Ien some days ago, having narrowly missed being spotted by the Rohirrim constantly stationed there, and that she had been following the north-south road while keeping the mountains east of her, Clarissa was fairly certain that she was somewhere in Dunland.

Which also meant that she had been captured by Dunlendings.

She almost sighed.

Instead, she turned her attention back to the man in the chair and attempted to use the tone of his rough voice and his relaxed mannerisms to try to make heads or tails of what he was saying to her. Clarissa also made sure not to move much at all as he talked, just in case she accidentally agreed to something she wasn't happy doing. Been there, done that, never again.

She still eyed her salads in the case that someone had added a little something-something to it. It had been over six years since Lance the Mercenary had added some rhubarb to one of them when she had spent some time living in the fifteenth century and she still didn't trust a salad she hadn't prepared herself.

Her stomach turned at the thought of the vegetable, and she schooled her expression into a neutral one. It wouldn't do her much good to be staring at dark and mysterious in disgust. The guy near him who had been glaring at her since she had first been shoved through the door would probably take it as a sign that he could chop her head off.

And she was quite attached to her head; didn't fancy becoming a firey.

She glanced over her shoulder slightly at the sound of the doors opening and watched as yet another man walked through into the room. He looked much the same as the others, in terms of appearance and the lack of clothing, but there was just one singular thing that made him stand out to her that the others did not have.

A shroud of darkness hung around his shoulders, looming over his entire body. It clung to his back and Clarissa found herself almost compelled to gaze into it, as an eerie sound began to echo in her head. She could see it then, hidden away within the wisps of the shadows, could see the hole in his chest and the glassy eyes.

It was his death, contained within shadows that only she could see.

Clarissa carefully exhaled as the nails of her left hand dug into the leather that covered her palm. Her markings were mostly covered by the bracer and the material of her shirred blouse, but hints of it could be seen poking out here and there. Much like they had been for the last hour or two, however, her usually white markings were blue, had been ever since she had somehow managed to hide Fenrir from sight once she had spotted the Dunlendings that had come riding towards the pair on their mounts.

The very much one-sided conversation that was going on right now would have probably been going much differently if the men could see the thigh-high ghostlike warg that was slowly prowling his way around the walls of the room, eyes ablaze as he stared at each and every person.

Words were exchanged between the new man and the one that Clarissa had dubbed the leader, and as per usual, she could understand none of what was being said. That hadn't been much opportunity for her to learn Westron since she had landed on Arda, let alone back home. Fallelm had never deemed it important enough for him to learn, as the only people he ever conversed with spoke either Entish or one of the many Elven languages.

_'Are they even speaking Westron?' _she thought, _'Could be Dunlendish for all I know.'_

The man in the chair barked something and before long, Clarissa found herself back outside and forced into somewhat of a makeshift arena. It was a ring in a pit of sand, with a crowd of people surrounding it. The leader of the group was once again sat in a chair, upon a platform just before the arena. He was flanked by two other men, each holding spears. Clarissa looked around, spotting another four men positioned at different positions around the arena and all holding spears of their own.

She clicked her tongue against the back of her teeth as a sword was thrust into her hands. She was still irritated over the fact that they had taken her things from her. It had rarely happened back home, but since she had found herself in Arda, it had happened twice in a few weeks.

Clarissa flexed her fingers around the hilt of the sword, slowly moving it this way and that as she tested the weight and feel of it. It wasn't an unfamiliar feeling, as her mother had trained her with every weapon she had ever been able to get her hands on, but still, a sword wasn't exactly the Shadow Walker's favourite weapon of choice. The sword itself wasn't too bad, wasn't too big or too small and considering the changes that had happened to her, it also wasn't all that heavy either. More like a foam sword than anything.

The corner of her lips twitched up slightly at the remainder of how else her body had changed. All the little advantages that suddenly being elven gave her.

She snapped to attention as the shadows whispered in her ears, rapidly spinning around to meet the man's sword with a loud, echoing clang before then slicing at his bare back as he moved past her from the momentum. The crowd oohed and awed in response.

The man then turned back around to face her and Clarissa watched as he began to circle around the makeshift arena, his eyes on her as he held his sword lazily in his right hand. She moved forward, swung her sword down in an arch and he blocked. She moved forward again and again he blocked. She spun this way and that to try and catch him off guard but each time, each swing of her sword was blocked with his own. Aside from the initial attack, Clarissa hadn't been able to land a hit on him.

Then his sword met hers and Clarissa slowly found it being pushed towards her, almost forcing her down to her knees. He was strong and fast and experienced. She gritted her teeth as her knee hit the sandy ground and she stared up at the man's face. He was grinning at her, eyes scanning up and down her frame as he pushed his weight down on her. Her eyes narrowed, and she quickly bought her free arm up, wrapping her bare palm around the blade of the man's sword.

Blood leaked from between her fingers, staining the blade as she pushed back against the force of it. A member of the crowd screamed in response just as she managed to move her arm enough to push the sword from her and slam it into the man's face. There was more noise from the crowd then, which increased in volume by the second as she stepped back.

The man snarled before swinging in her direction and she twirled under the sword covered in her blood, only to suddenly find her wrist in her man's grasp. She quickly moved her sword towards him, and he immediately blocked it before swinging his leg into the back of her knee. She grunted as she fell forward, her arm coming down to brace herself. Even with her body faced away from her opponent, Clarissa still managed to twist the upper half of her body towards him to block the sword that was about to cut into her shoulder.

But he used the movement to twist her arm, forcing it back down as he then kicked her sword away from her. She watched as it slid across the sand and found herself thinking several weeks back, to when that orc had thrown her dirk into the darkness of Fangorn Forest.

Clarissa spun, her hands held together in a fist as she slammed it into the man's knee, much like he had done with his leg only moments ago. As he fell to his knees she shot up and slammed her knee into his chin and ripped his sword from his grasp as he tumbled backwards from her. She quickly used the time to grab her own sword. She twirled it over her shoulder once as she looked down at the man before her, her unarmed opponent.

She moved a leg backwards as she brought an arm up behind her head. The man shifted his attention between her and the crowd. Then he sprung forward, punching one of the arena guards in the face before ripping the spear he held in his grasp from him. Her opponent then spun it in a rapid circle as he turned back towards her.

The spear now gave him an advantage she didn't have, gave him some reach.

Clarissa ducked under the spear as it was spun around towards her and circled around the man. She then shot forward, bringing one sword down towards the man as she brought the other one around towards his side. However, the man spun and moved the spear around his body with enough speed that neither hit him. The pair twirled and spun, their weapons moving so fast that they almost became blurs but despite what either of them did, neither managed to land a single hit on the other.

At least, not until Clarissa caught the spear between her swords in a crisscross shape. Then the spear was slammed down into her face and she could feel the blood that spilt down her as a result. She grunted, baring her teeth at the man as she stumbled backwards, blinking her eye to stop the blood from obscuring her vision.

She swung one of the swords forward and the man slammed the shaft of his spear into the blade, putting just enough force behind the movement to knock the weapon from her grasp. Then there was a heavy boot in her chest that sent her flying backwards. Her body crashed to the ground and her head ricocheted off the sand as her last weapon fell loose.

The crowd echoed in her ears and she blinked through the blood dripping into her left eye as the man came closer to her. He threw the spear up and caught it in his hand again. Then the blade was against her throat and Clarissa could hear her heartbeat in her ears as the rest of the world went silent. The man bought the spear back up and just as it came back down…

Clarissa was suddenly two feet forward from her previous position. She was no longer on the ground but now behind the man. She gasped as the shadows moved across her body as they slowly sank back into the ground, back into the darkness they had originally crawled out of. Her arm shone like a star under a microscope.

The shadows whispered in her ears like a lost lover and she knew she would have so many questions to ask herself at a later date, but first, first, she had an opponent to defeat. She spun around while the man was still confused and puzzle over what had happened and slammed her foot into his ankle.

Then it was his turn to be floored and Clarissa cartwheeled as he quickly got back up and swung his spear in a circle towards her. She ducked and dodged as he attacked her but managed to find an opening in his attack, which she used to steal the spear from him leaving him weaponless yet again. She swung the spear around and down, slicing into the back of his knee. Then she bought it back up to cut across his bare chest before slamming the shaft up into his chin. He jerked backwards once again, blood flying from his mouth.

The crowd went wild and Clarissa spun the spear around in her grasp as she moved towards her downed opponent. She looked down at him, no emotion in her visible blue eye as she held the tip of the spear against the man's unprotected throat.

"It's nothing personal," Clarissa whispered. "It's just survival."

Then she pierced his chest and crushed the spear into the man's heart. Blood sprouted from his mouth like a broken faucet as the light vanished from his eyes. She stared at the corpse before her before flickering her attention back towards the reason behind the fight. He was sat in his chair, lent forward so his forearms were rested on his thighs.

Clarissa yanked the spear out before pointing its bloodied tip in his direction. "Who's next?"

* * *

**Author's Note: **Why, yes, I did base my Dunlendings on the Dothraki. The seeing death in the darkness was inspired by two things; the Korean tv show '_Black' _and the story '_Dead Little Crow' _by **seeing_blue** on AO3.

I hope I did the fight scene alright, it's my first ever time writing one. I know it is mostly swords swinging this way and that, but I honestly didn't know how else to write it. I've been stuck on that one scene for almost a month now.


	5. Briseann An Dúchas Trí Shúile An Chait

**Author's Note**: This chapter shows a little more of where Clarissa's moral compass is pointed to. She's a survivor after all, and to survive, you have to do some morally grey things.

* * *

**Through the Valley of Shadows**

**Chapter Five  
****Briseann An Dúchas Trí Shúile An Chait  
**_once a thief, always a thief_

**(Valanya the 24****th**** of Úrimë, Third Age 2939. Bree, Eriador, Middle Earth.)**

**Merchant **season was in full swing, with travellers from all walks of the realm seeking rest and shelter within the dingy village. There were dozens of stalls set up, with fine silks from the Eastlands or supple leathers brought in from Rohan and other trinkets and finery from Mahal-knows-where. They weren't very likely to receive many high-paying customers, as most of the inhabitants of the village were either farmers or millers or shopkeepers, but the village still puttered about curiously, their conversations teeming with gossip and speculation.

From atop a building, and close to the ledge, Clarissa leant back on nimble heels and observed the happenings of Bree. The butcher that was hanging his still-bleeding wares in the street raw, the women gossiping out of windows to each other and air-drying their laundry over the lane, men carrying swords at their hips and eyeing everyone they saw with others passed out next to barrels of ale after a night of nonstop heavy drinking.

She could hear horses and sheep off in the distance, gazing about in the small paddocks that were attached to the backs of farmers' homes. Could make out the loud laughter of children as they ran and weaved their way through the winding roads, the calls of their mothers echoing behind them.

Her nose twitched as the smells consumed her. Whilst all medieval villages had always smelt something horrid to her, it was now so much worse. It smelt as though she was stood in the middle of a cesspit. There was excrement, and bodies badly in need of bathing. Metal, leathers and animals, food and wood and things she couldn't identify. Sharp and tangy, sickly sweet, mucky and acidic and spicy, and then everything bleeding into everything else until all she could make out was the headache that she was already starting to get from it.

She closed her eyes and exhaled sharply, absentmindedly twirling a lockpick between her middle finger and her index as she focused on dialling back all the unnecessary and unwanted things she was picking up. It was a much easier and quicker process now, compared to when she had first arrived in Arda, but it still took some time and thought on her part.

Really, she shouldn't complain about the boosted senses but…

It all did get a bit much at times.

The sound of a door swinging open and the loud thumping of feet caught her attention and Clarissa zeroed in on a tired and harried-looking woman that was herding four children out of her house and into the streets. She then dropped her keys and hissed out a curse as one of the young boys bolted off without first telling her. After snapping at him, the woman retrieved her keys from the ground, grabbed what looked to be the youngest by the hand, and hurried after her wayward son, her other children trailing behind her like little ducklings.

Clarissa smiled in amusement as she noticed the woman glance around with wary eyes as she herded her children off down the streets. She could understand the suspicion, however, as she had been in Bree for a little over a week now and had already stolen a number of things to fence, as well as pieces of fabric here and there for future patching of clothes.

The small satchel at her hip had been slowly increasing in bulge as the days passed. She twirled her lockpick this way and that as she recalled how hesitant and moral filled she had been as a child. A child who had once gone two weeks eating only wild berries because she hadn't wanted to kill innocent animals or resort to selling from people.

'_How time changes all.'_

Good and bad, right and wrong—it had always been portraited as black and white, simple and clean-cut in anything she watched or read. But she knew now that life simply wasn't that easy to label because if it was, she wouldn't have hesitated to slew the head off Fenrir for all wargs were evil, demonic wolves.

Her attention flickered down to the streets below, focusing on a small part of a dark alley that sat between two houses. In the darkness cast by the tall walls was a muddy puddle that seemed to be moving about by itself as the water splashed upwards and ripples exploded across its surface. The villagers that walked past seemed to think it was just a small animal that was cloaked by the shadows. They were partially right, for the animal splashing around in the alley puddles wasn't one that Clarissa herself would deem _small. _

As she watched her companion rolled around in filth like a puppy—despite now being an elbow high puppy—she couldn't imagine anyone who would look at Fenrir currently and think of him as something evil that needed to be put down, but she knew this world and how it worked. It was storyteller black and white, if one was evil then they all were.

It was why she had been solely seeking out places where the majority of people were humans. Humans, she knew how to deal with. She couldn't imagine how the dwarves would look at her or how the other, proper elves would see her. A child in the body of an adult and a member of the race that had abandoned them when they needed help the most, more than likely.

The Shadow Walker gently tugged on the shadows that cloaked Fenrir from the seen realm and watched as the warg immediately froze, then stood for attention as he glanced at her from over his shoulders. His eyes blazed in the darkness and she grinned before nodding in the direction of the house the tired women had herded her children out of. He stood up straighter as he then made his way through the gathering crowds in the streets and once he had gotten close enough; he stopped to stand beside a stack of tall and bulky wooden crates that one of the shopkeepers had put out the night before.

Clarissa snorted to herself at her unusual lookout, before silently making her way across the connected roofs until she found a place where she could jump down nearby the house. A length of wooden beam that was connected across the street and often used as somewhere to banners from was good enough for her. With practised ease and a newfound light footedness, she ran lightly along it until she came to a point just above the unlocked door.

She silently jumped down from the two-story-high rope and landed softly on her feet. Within seconds of landing, she had slipped into the house unseen and unheard by anyone.

The house itself was laid out in a similar fashion to many of the two-story-high homes Clarissa had entered into. The kitchen was off at the back of the house and fairly decent in size and was connected to the front room by an archway. There were a few chairs spread out across said room with bookshelves stationed around. They even had a nice fireplace.

Raising her hand so that she could open the pouch that was attached to the front of her harness, she then pulled out the folded square of fabric that was her duffel bag. She took a slow tour around the front room as she unfolded the bag, her eyes scanning over the things that immediately caught her eye as something she could fence. A silver candlestick that had no actual candles in it was the first to be deposited into her duffel, followed by a small pocket watch and a locket that didn't actually contain a picture inside.

There were numerous empty flasks spread out across the kitchen room and each one was thrown in. Flasks were easy to get rid of, there was always someone wanting one as there were so many drinkers about. She quickly dripped into the kitchen drawers and pantry and came back out a few coins heavier in cutlery and cups and saucers.

After deeming the downstairs cleared of anything she could actually get rid of and wouldn't be stuck with, Clarissa then made her way upstairs. There were two rooms upstairs. The leftmost was open and from what she could see, was the children's room. She ignored it and turned towards the master bedroom, which had a simple pin and chamber lock.

'_Children's play.' _

Although not very big, as per usual with these types of houses, the bedroom was filled with all sorts of goodies. Clarissa's attention immediately fell upon the nearest dresser which had a box of fine jewellery and precious gems sat on top of it. There were a number of big expensive earrings, but she lingered the most on the simple studs and the tiny hoops.

She herself hadn't worn earrings for some years now and the premade holes had all closed up shut. Still, she couldn't help but imagined how she would now look with piercings in her long-pointed ears and found herself liking the mental image. She was an oddity in the world of Arda, where elves had neither piercing nor tattoo.

'_How boring.'_

She held up a long gold chain with a single finger, watching as the light reflected off the garnets set in it. It reminded her of renaissance necklaces, and she knew that if she were to fence it, it would fetch her a hefty price. That, or she could remove the gems and melt down the gold. Either way, profit for her. She placed it into her duffel. The dresses in the wardrobes were made of fine fabrics and materials, but Clarissa ignored them, as she could never fence them properly and they just turned out to be a hassle to move.

Pulling open a bedside table rewarded her with a hefty-sized coin purse and yet another flask.

The house was practically drowning in flasks.

A low, barely audible howl piercing through the air, however, caused her to pause in her tracks. She immediately dropped the coin purse into her duffel, buckled the bag, and threw it over a shoulder. She then silently moved back through the house after making sure to lock the bedroom door behind her and had just begun to retrace her steps when the front door swung open with the force of a hurricane and cracked against the stone wall with a loud, echoing bang that almost sounded like a gunshot.

She watched from her position at the bottom of the stairs as the man stormed in, stumbling over bits of furniture and at times the air itself. He tripped over a small table positioned near a chair by the fireplace and she watched as he stumbled into the corner of a bookcase, rattling the contents of the entire structure. He cursed, his words slurred by alcohol, as he slowly made his way into the kitchen where he was more than likely going to find a flask. All of which were in Clarissa's duffel.

The house no longer held anything of value to her, so she silently slipped out through the door the man had stupidly left open in his wake, the shadows curled and coiled around her like vines. The light footedness of an elf and the darkness that Shadow Walker's manipulated made for the perfect combination when someone didn't want to be noticed.

Fenrir was sat in the same place she had left, his attention still fixated on the house, and she paused for a small second as a loud yell sounded from inside the house which was companied by several foul curses and swears along with the loud bang of something hitting the ground. She couldn't help but smile in amusement as she patted the warg on the head.

"Well done, Fen."

After adjusting the strap of her duffel, the unusual pair then made their way back through the crowds of Bree as they headed to the outskirts of the village. Fenrir never strayed from her side, ever so vigilant, his ink-black fur constantly brushing across any bare skin it came across as they made their way further and further from the house they had just _'borrowed' _from.

The pair weaved through the streets and Clarissa let her gaze wander as they once again passed through the merchants' stalls. There were bolts of cloth in all kinds of colours, some stalls had a variety of weapons, from bows and arrows to swords and daggers. There were food stands and jewellery booths, someone offering cups of beer—probably a homemade brew—there were dishes and silverware, candles and perfumes, and all manner of things in between. Everyone haggled at the top of their voices, while some also bartered.

The jangling money pouches and flashes of silver caught her eye the most, however. It didn't take much effect on her part to slip her fingers into the pockets of unexpecting villagers as they passed and gain herself a few extra pouches filled with coin. She pocketed the pouches and looked across at Fenrir when a flash of blurred black caught her attention.

In his mouth dangled a piece of dried jerky that one of the food merchants had had out on display.

Clarissa scoffed and shook her head slightly in amusement as she patted her companion on the head once again for a job well done. Then out of the corner of her eye, she caught the sight of several curly-haired men running through people's legs and calling for attention from the vendors, even trading with them. The majority of them came up to about her hip.

It wasn't her first time actually coming across hobbits in Arda, as many of them lived in Bree-land, but it was still a sight to behold when, to her, they hadn't existed that long ago.

Steering out of the crowd the Shadow Walker and her companion headed down a less-crowded street, weaving around corners as they followed the sound of metal striking metal. The sound of clanging grew louder and louder, until finally as they rounded another corner, the local blacksmithy came into sight. The blacksmith was stood out front, his arm coming down in a practised rapid movement as he swung and swung his hammer down on a long strip of iron that was laid out across the anvil.

Clarissa waited until a woman walking nearby headed inside her house before pulling the shadows back so that she was once again visible to those in the seen realm.

As per usual, Fenrir was content to remain hidden whilst they were still in the village. The warg _hated _being in confined environments and only entered the villages that they visited as he didn't trust that Clarissa wouldn't get herself arrested. The fact that she could understand all that from a side gaze never ceased to amaze her.

Just as she took a step forward, a sharp breeze blew past and tugged slightly at the material of the cloak that hid her body when the shadows had recoiled back. Her white-blonde hair was tidied in Dunlendish style braids and then wrapped in a bun; her ears concealed beneath. The shadows cast over her face from the big hood hid not only her youthful and feminine features but also her unique eyes and the long lashes that surrounded them. Whilst shorter than the majority of others in Bree, she still blended in nicely.

Most didn't bother to give her a passing glance, and those that did, well…

She glanced over her shoulder at Fenrir and he stared back. She remembered screaming and snarling, teeth glistening with red and orange eyes aglow in the darkness. Those that were stupid enough to follow her into the woods at night with less than friendly intentions deserved whatever they got. She wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

'_Not that I sleep much these days anyway…'_

A grunt drew her attention back towards the smithy and Clarissa found herself staring into dark eyes hidden beneath thick, bushy eyebrows. The blacksmith stared back in indifference, not fazed at all by the cloaked individual that stood in front of his business and she couldn't help the smile that drew at the annoyance that showed in the downward tilt at the corners of his lips and the crow's feet that sat in the corners of his eyes. The blacksmith was _never _happy to see her around his smithy.

"Hello to you too, Bo." Semi-fluent Westron fell from her mouth and the blacksmith, Bo, grunted again. Over the last few months, Clarissa had learnt enough that she could hold a decently long conversation with someone, but a few words here and there and bits of grammar still fell through the cracks.

The four and a half months she had spent in Dunland had greatly helped her learn some things that she had not known about beforehand. Like the reason she had been captured by them in the first place had been because one of the men had seen her and wanted her as his wife. The man she had killed. Apparently, _that _had been some sort of twisted engagement ceremony. If she had been bested or had submitted, then in the eyes of the Dunlendings the pair would have been considered an almost wedded couple.

She had learnt all of it from Saga, a girl of thirteen winters who had been pregnant with her second child when she had last seen her. Saga had been the one friend Clarissa had in Dunland, the one who had taught her the customs and helped with her common tongue. The braids Dunlendish wore in their hair were sort of battle trophies. The more battles they won, the longer and longer their hair got, and the more braids were added. She had ended up liking the custom so much that she continued to do it for herself after leaving.

Bo grunted again, this time in a lower tone that equalled towards him being greatly annoyed. Clarissa grinned at him from underneath the shadows of her hood, her lips curled back to expose her bright, pearly white teeth. Teeth that had sharper canines that one usually had, ones that bordered on actual fangs and ones that she blamed on Fenrir.

She hadn't had them _before _she had bonded with him.

Nor had he had ink-black fur.

"Owen around?" She patted the strap of the duffel that was slung over her shoulder and Bo stared at it as though it bored him. The only time the older Rushlight brother ever cared about what Clarissa had in her duffel was when there was something inside that he could make use of, like cutlery he could smelt down or discarded weapons that could be resold.

After jabbing a thumb at the air behind him, Bo then immediately turned back to his work. She had been dismissed. Running the tip of her tongue across the sides of one of her canines, which had turned into her way of biting her tongue without actually doing so, the Shadow Walker made her way through the large wooden barn doors and into the smithy.

"Well, if it isn't my favourite nightingale."

Clarissa snorted as she glanced up from underneath her eyelashes. Owen Rushlight grinned back at her with a boyish smile as he pushed himself off the pillar he had been leaning on as he watched her interact with his brother. With his strong jaw and bright eyes, the youngest Rushlight was attractive enough to get many of the women in town thrown at his feet. For some reason, however, he was fixated on the one that he had never seen the face of or knew the name of. All he had was a voice and her Shadow Walker alias.

Apparently, that was enough for him.

Thumping her duffel down on a nearby table, which rattled both the table and the contents, Clarissa gestured from him to the bag. "What will you give me for this lot?"

She, however, had no intention of ever mixing business with pleasure.

"Straight to business, Nightingale? We never speak."

None the less Owen made his way over the table where he unbuckled the bag and carefully leafed through everything inside by slightly moving them out of the way with the push of a finger. He seemed most amusement by the number of flasks she had picked up and after a moment of looking through everything; he looked up. "Three silver."

Clarissa arched an eyebrow. "Piece or penny?"

"I'll raise it to two silver piece if you go for a drink at the Pony with me tonight."

Nothing was said in response as she leant in closer, only stopping once they were practically chest to chest to each other. Then, she raised a hand to trace a single nail down the muscles that she knew he hid behind his clothes. She heard more than felt as his heart rate picked up. Then, as her breath brushed across the skin of his ear, she purred.

"Oh Owen, I'm just not that easy."

She pushed him back slightly, leaving him bent at the hip against the table, his eyes wide and dilated and his chest heaving with breathlessness. It was almost too easy. She agilely spun around on her heels and scooped up the duffel she had left on the table, along with three silver pennies out a pile that had been left on the table from another time before making her way back through the smithy and towards the entrance. She heard Owen laugh behind her and grinned at Bo as she passed, said grin growing further as Bo rolled his eyes in disgust. As per usual visiting the Rushlights was an eventful experience.

After whistling for Fenrir—who was at her side instantly—Clarissa waved at Bo as she and the warg headed outside of the village walls. The shadows weaved and curled on her command, slowly retreating back to wherever they had come from. A sharp exhale of breath came from some distance behind her as Fenrir became visible to the others.

"**Koh u gajup."**

Fenrir's toe-curling howl echoed through the skies and Clarissa smiled, a corner of her mouth raised in response, as she watched him disappear into the forest. The local wildlife stood no chance of surviving once the warg had locked onto their scent, for there was not much at all that could stand a chance at outrunning a Gundabad warg.

She detached her bow from its place on her harness and nocked an arrow as she tracked her companion through the foliage. Fenrir had a habit of ruining the skin and meat once he got too into the hunt. She hoped that they had a good enough day that she could sell a few smaller catches to the local butcher afterwards.

Emmerson hadn't turned her business away yet.

* * *

**Author's Note: **I'm really hoping that that end part wasn't too rushed, but in my head, Clarissa doesn't interact with the brothers much at a time at all. It's more of an in and out situation. Anyway! More Fenrir and Clarissa interaction! I left you all with only one tiny mention of him last chapter, so I hope this makes up for that. I've been imaging Clarissa's hair to be like Daenerys from GoT, with all the braids and such so I hope that I'm portraying that properly.

I also have **two **questions for my viewers!

1) If I end up pairing Clarissa with someone, who do you think it should be and _why? _

2) Should I slowly give her pieces of her memory back, or should it be completely lost?

**Black Speech  
**Koh u gajup : time to hunt


	6. Ní Sceitheann An Uaigh A Rún

**Author's Note: **I'm terribly sorry about the almost two-month break, but this chapter kicked my ass. I had such bad writer's block for it for weeks and then my muse buggered on over to the _Harry Potter _fandom for the first time in years. Anyway, let's continue on with one of Clarissa's last pre-_Hobbit _adventures!

* * *

**Through the Valley of Shadows**

**Chapter Six  
****Ní Sceitheann An Uaigh A Rún  
**_dead men tell no tales_

**(Menelya the 12th of Narvinyë, Third Age 2940. Trollshaws, Eastern Eriador, Middle Earth.)**

**With **a sharp commanding whistle, Clarissa signalled for Fenrir to halt as she came to an abrupt stop herself. She then crouched down, gently brushing aside a few pieces of foliage with the head of her arrow. Underneath the leaves and twigs was the indentation of a large boot print much the same as the others she and her companion had been tracking for the better part of three and a half days.

The hunt had been going fairly well enough—at least until the heavy rainfall the previous night which had dispersed the scent and washed debris over the tracks.

Now the Shadow Walker had muddied, fading prints and Fenrir had a scent that was scattered. Shifting her rucksack so that it hung from one shoulder, Clarissa pulled out a small green dress from the main pocket. It was old but had also been fairly recently washed so there wasn't much at all to pick up from it, but the dress little Ella's mother had given her still helped.

She brought it to her nose and breathed in the smell of sweets and baking flour, before then holding it lower so that the warg beside her could try to find the scent again. Little ten-year-old Ella had been missing almost a week now and Clarissa knew that time was shortening if she wanted to find her in time. A Ranger that had wandered into Bree had set out the day after having heard of the kidnapping from the distraught father the tavern, but she hadn't known about it herself until Ella's mother had found her in the smithery.

The fact that the scent had lead Clarissa deep into the Trollshaws unsettled her.

Not for the trolls that might have come down from the Ettenmoors already, which she hadn't ruled out, but for the fact that through the Trollshaws was usually the route most took when they were heading to Rhudaur when they didn't wish to be seen. Clarissa had heard talk of trafficking happening in parts of the kingdom for months now, where the focus was mainly on women and children. Or any of elven blood that was found wandering alone. Little Ella was pretty and young, a hobbit not yet of age.

Clarissa sighed as she raked a hand through her hair, a finger momentarily getting snagged in a braid, before she then stood and signalled for the warg for continue on. She kept her bow low and drawn at her side, ready to release the nocked arrow at the earliest sign of movement. Arrows through the knee usually kept men from moving.

Deeper and deeper into the pines they traversed, the sun slowly settling beneath the hillocks in the west.

Hunting in sunlight or moonlight mattered not to the Shadow Walker and her warg, who could both see clearly in either, but Clarissa did much prefer it when the stars hung above her head. Even if they were the single most thing that made her homesick, wanting for that little bit of home. Ever since she had been a child, she had been able to point out any star asked and name it, along with the constellation it belonged to if it did any. Now, however, when she looked up at the stars, she was unable to identify a single one.

Names for some she had in her head from tales, but she could never point them out when she looked up at the night sky.

'_One day.'_

'_After I learn to read Westron.'_

Would it be ill-mannered of her if she asked to be paid in books?

Fenrir came to an abrupt stop and snarled; his lips curled back over his teeth. Clarissa silently moved beside him and crouched down as she too spotted the lights that glistened through the trees. The pair had come across another smaller camp before in the Trollshaws but the warg had circled around it, having found it of no interest. This one, however, had the same scents they had been tracking for days emanating from the tents that had been set up.

She nodded her head to the side, indicating for Fenrir to go around the other side of the camp where the smell of candy and baking flour was the strongest. Then with a practised and eased motion, Clarissa wrapped the shadows around him as he slowly prowled through the underbrush while leaving herself uncovered and visible to the naked eye.

It was far easier for her to attract and maintain someone's attention without them suspecting anything than it was if they saw Fenrir. People saw a warg, and they thought danger, whereas when they saw her danger wasn't the first thought to pop into their heads. Especially when she had her cloak hood down and her ears out.

It was a simple trap, but she found it often the best one as well.

What better use of her looks than luring bad people into a false sense of security, where beneath the plump lips and ample chest were sharp teeth and even sharper blades. And behind the shadows lurked a monster or two, hidden just out of sight. While Shadow Walkers weren't evil, they were also hardly the heroes people spoke about in tales, regardless of whatever heroics they might have done. Once they see something happen, to them it is set. Nothing could be done to change it because the shadows themselves wouldn't allow it.

Even if the Shadow Walker wished for it to be.

Thus, why Clarissa's arrival on Arda had been giving her such a headache.

Because technically she had never seen the future that will happen. She might have seen _a _future, a single possibility in a branch of possibilities but she didn't know if that was the set future in the non-fictional Arda as it was for the fictional one. She would be damned if she didn't try changing it, however, as she wouldn't know until she tried.

She had other matters to be dealing with now, however, so she focused back on the matter at hand.

Three rather haggard tents were set up in a small clearing, with a single lantern hanging from one of the supports of the tents. A large supply sack and a few cloth sacks lay in a pile next to the northmost tent and in the middle of the camp was an old log lying close to a dying fire, the embers still glowing ever so faintly. Hanging over the coals was a small cooking pot, and from what she could gather from the smell, one of the men had left out the remains of their dinner. Clarissa had never liked to do that herself, concerned that someone or something would then be able to smell it and make their way towards her camp. It was also why she rarely made camp on the ground, preferring to sleep high up in a tree branch.

She crept into the clearing where the men had made their camp without so much as a whisper.

The little girl was fairly easy to spot, tied as she was to a tree on the outskirts of the camp, unshielded from the elements or protected from any of the things that prowled the forest at night. Clarissa signalled for her to be quiet and the girl nodded with wide eyes, curly hair bobbing and cheeks flushed from the cold. She wore a simple flowery dress and nothing else, and the Shadow Walker couldn't imagine how cold she must be when she herself rarely felt the efforts of the elements.

"_Your mother sent me, Ella," _Clarissa whispered once she had made it across the camp and placed her bow back on her back. _"I need you to be silent and trust me. Can you do that?"_

Ella stared for a moment, before then nodding rapidly as tears began to spill down her face. Her wrists were rubbed raw from the tight ropes and Clarissa didn't hesitate as she gently placed a hand over the girl's small wrists and called the shadows forth to heal them. Ella's eyes widened even further, filling with awe, as she stared at her now unblemished wrists.

Clarissa smiled at her, signalled again for her to remain silent, and then held her hand out. Ella stared, her body practically vibrating she was shivering so much, and Clarissa couldn't tell how much of it was from the cold, and how much of it was from fear. Then there was a small hand clasped in her own and the Shadow Walker wrapped the shadows around the pair of them before then leading the girl silently away from the camp. Tears continued to fall but Ella silenced herself with her other hand over her mouth.

Once they had made it far enough away from the tents that Clarissa was less worried about noise, she crouched down so that she was eye level to the girl and pulled back the shadows. Ella shivered but managed a smile, her eyes filled with tears but also childlike curiosity and awe. Her eyes then widened further as Clarissa unclasped her cloak and draped it over her.

The young hobbit's eyes flickered rapidly from beneath the too big hood, shifting between the long ears that poked through Clarissa's loose hair to her mismatched eyes.

"_My friend is going to take you far from here now, is that alright Ella?"_

"_Friend?" _The girl looked around them, and the Shadow Walker knew that she could see nothing in the darkness that surrounded them despite her sharp hobbit eyesight. There were only so many that could look through the veil that separated the two realms from each other.

Clarissa nodded. _"Yes, my friend. He's very big and scary looking, but he will protect you. I just need you to be quiet, okay? If you make too much noise, the men are going to wake up."_

"_Okay," _the girl whispered.

The shadows were once again pulled back, with Clarissa's attention completely focused on Ella in case she made a scene at the sight of Fenrir. But other than a further widening of the eyes, the young hobbit froze at the sight of the large horse-sized warg that had suddenly appeared at Clarissa's side, sunset orange eyes glistening in the dark. Then a second later, the girl did something that surprised both the Shadow Walker and her companion.

Ella had learnt forward ever so slightly and placed her tiny hand on Fenrir's snout. _"Big dog."_

Clarissa and Fenrir exchanged a wordless look and the Shadow Walker smiled faintly. After taking a moment to explain to Ella that Fenrir was going to run as fast as he can away from the camp so that she was somewhere nice and safe, somewhere Clarissa would be able to find her later, the young hobbit was lifted up onto the warg. With Fenrir's dark fur and the cloak wrapped around her, Ella was completely invisible to anyone without elven eyesight.

She smiled at Clarissa just before Fenrir disappeared back into the shadows and shot off. There was a gasp of surprise, but Ella seemed more excited than scared. Children never ceased to amaze the Shadow Walker with their curiosity and their relative fearlessness.

But now, with Ella safety away from the camp, Clarissa had other matters at hand to deal with.

She looked over her shoulder, a dark look fading across her face as she stared at the lamplight that still glinted through the tree branches. Now she just had the men to deal with, as there was absolutely no way that she could allow the men to live another day, where they would be able to take another child from their parents.

Backtracking her footsteps, Clarissa then paused before the supply sack beside one of the tents. After a moment, she then crouched down and snaked nimble fingers inside. There wasn't much in terms of information inside and she shook her head in disappointment, as though she hadn't expected that to be the result.

She paused at the sensation of something cold and sharp pressed into the space between her shoulder blades, right behind her heart.

Clarissa could hear the blood that pumped through his veins. She could smell the sweat on his skin—old and new—and the fact that he was in desperate need of a bath. She was more focused on these things than the fact that there was a sword pointed at her back. That wasn't anything new, especially as of late.

Then he spoke, voice deadly calm, and all her attention shifted to that. "The girl is gone. What a meddlesome _elf_ you are."

The word elf was spat with so much disgust Clarissa was half convinced the man was part dwarf. Since when did the race of men hold so much animosity towards the elves? She wasn't much concerned about the feelings of the kidnapper with the sword, but she could hear the other men beginning to stir themselves awake.

So, she jerked forward and spun around on one knee with such speed that the world blurred. Her left leg shot forward, coming around to swipe the man's out from under him. He gave a loud grunt as he went down and she internally cursed as she heard the other men spring awake from inside of their tents. As Clarissa looked at the man through her green eye, she found herself being pulled into his essence. She saw what made him the man he was, what his past was. She saw that he had a wife and children at home and that he felt no guilt over the children he had helped kidnap and traffic—had even _sampled _a few of them.

She knew undoubtedly, as clearly as she felt the magic alive in the air, that the man before her wouldn't be going down without a fight. A fight that if he won…

_("The thoughts of men cannot be hidden from us, birdie, no matter how much they might wish it.")_

Disgust curled her lips and Clarissa glared at the father of four through the cold, icy blue eye on her right side and the man faltered for a moment once he had stood back up.

"I wonder if your children would still be so proud of their papa if they knew what papa really got up too."

A look of shock and surprise crossed the man's face before it then twisted, and he went to grab a fistful of her shirred blouse to yank her forward. However, before he could, just as his fingers wrapped around the material, light shone through her bodice and she watched as _his flesh began to burn._

She could only watch in silent shock as he howled in pain, shoving her backwards as he clutched at his hand with the other. Then she felt it, the warmth against her skin, right where her necklace lay hidden beneath her clothes. He had touched her necklace when he had made to grab her, and it had burnt him. A _rock _had _burnt _him.

_(A warm kiss to her forehead, feathery brushes of fiery red hair across her cheeks. "Always wear it, it will keep you safe when I cannot.")_

Clarissa almost laughed as it suddenly became clear what her mother had meant all those years ago. If only the orc she had killed back in Fangorn Forest had touched her necklace first.

The sound of tent flaps opening drew her attention, and she looked across her shoulder as the other men appeared before her. A shroud of darkness was draped across each of them and the Shadow Walker smiled at the sight of their impending deaths. The twisted vines that crawled up from the bowels of the earth to grasp the heart of one. The tendrils of blood that ran down the side of another's head and the bones that jutted from the throat of the next. The glop that dripped down another's face, streaming down from his eyes.

The blood that blossomed like a flower in the chest of the last.

In her absentmindedness, she didn't notice one of the men moving towards her until a second too late. By then her arm had been roughly tugged, and she was yanked to his chest. The hand that was not on her arm was then tangled through her hair, fingers roughly ripping through her braids as her head was pulled to a tilted angle. The man grinned maliciously, teeth a dark yellow and breath drenched in what she presumed to be cheap mead he must have had before turning in for the night.

The smell washed over her as the man laughed, voice filled with lewdness as he spoke to the others, and a cold chill began to creep up Clarissa's spine. It then intensified until it _burnt _as it filled her, consumed every part of her being, and she could see the shadows respond in kind.

The multitude of shadows around the camp grew bigger, thicker, and far more menacing than she had ever seen them before. She felt it then, the life in the air as it moved around her, once again pushing and pulling and urging her into action as though she was simply going to stand there and do _nothing _again_. _Oh, no. Clarissa had been simply playing with them.

The man holding her froze for a moment, eyes flickering down to her much smaller five-three frame. She stared back and saw the briefest glimpse of uncertainty before lust grew his pupils and his smile grew cockier, as Clarissa pressed her fingers against the loose tunic he wore. He barked in amusement to the other men, and one laughed again as he nudged his comrade with his shoulder as he watched her. The burnt father of four simply stared at her with rage brimming in his eyes, his wrist dripping from the water he had tipped on it.

She raised her other hand, pressed the faintest of touches to the side of the man's face, angling her body to the side so that it was pressed against him. She had long since learnt how to use her body as a weapon. And as his face came closer to hers, washing her in its stench, time seemed to slow like it did in Fangorn. Everything came into sharp detail as her senses expanded. She could see the pores on his face, the grains of dirt on his hand. The give of the ground under her feet and the direction of the wind.

It was all just like before, except the only difference was that Clarissa was stronger now.

The men before her wouldn't have the chance the orc had had when she had slipped into her mind and left herself defenceless.

Without blinking an eye, without a thought to what she was doing, she felt her arm slip through into the shadows and phase through the fabric of the man's tunic, through the bones of his ribcage, and her cold, cold shadowy fingers wrapped around the pulsating flesh of his heart. She stared up into his eyes as they widened in a frozen expression of pain and surprise.

Then she thrust her arm back, taking the organ with her. He choked, warm blood gushing from his mouth before he flopped lifelessly onto her. Clarissa found the weight to be nothing. He weighed nothing to her. She heard the uninjured man chuckle at the sight, the way her body had been angled and the darkness of the shadows around them having blocked their sight of what had just happened. She then pushed the male away from her, watching as he dropped to the ground like the lifeless sack he was.

His comrades shouted their bewilderment, and she turned to face them, the heart still in her hand. She watched as they took in the sight of it before eyes then turned back to her and she tilted her hand to the side slightly, allowing the now useless organ to roll from her grasp.

One of the men gave a startled gasp, taking a few steps back from her. She could see that he was the youngest, the greenest of them and found that she could smell that he smelt… uncertain. The one on his right was well seasoned but hid an old injury in his right knee. The one on his left was the most versed in using his sword.

She smiled a smile of snow.

The other two men had pulled out their swords and were now advancing on her, but her attention was still on the one she had burnt who was hidden behind the rest. She wondered what the men hoped to accomplish. If they wanted to finish what the first one had set out to do, or if they were hoping to capture her to traffic. She found herself not caring much either way. It wasn't as though she was going to allow it to happen, allow them to turn her into a victim again. She refused. She was stronger than that, stronger than them.

No-one else could choose what to do with her. Only she had that choice.

While Arda might be a fantasy world, that didn't mean that a knight in shining armour was just going to appear on his white stallion and rescue her from evil. Clarissa had learnt that lesson far too early, the lesson that if she wanted to be saved, she would have to do it herself. Sometimes someone might try but most of the time, people were fine with ignoring all the evil and disgusting things that happened around them.

The majority of the human race were watchers, regardless of when they found themselves being born.

She watched in silence as one of the men, the one with the bad knee, began to taunt her. His mouth moved and words tumbled out that she knew he meant to affect her somehow, but she found them simply passing through one ear to the other as she instead focused on his movements, his breath and his heartbeat. All things that would soon cease to be.

When he advanced on her, sword at the ready, she feigned a movement to the side and when he slashed at her, she gracefully moved to his other side, twirling away from the blade. In the same movement, one of her legs shot out, striking the man in the back of his weak knee and as he went down, one of her hands moved through the air, nimble fingers wrapping around the hunting knife she kept in the sheath on the front of her harness. In one rapid succession, Clarissa had it out of its sheath and stabbed into the side of the man's temple.

The knife was made for ripping through the carcasses of animals she hunted.

It made quick work of the bone that protected the man's head.

She then rolled under the sword stroke of the second man, using the momentum to remove the double-edged knife she kept holstered on one of her thighs. The other had her throwing knives. She then viciously stabbed him in the groin. She slid from under his falling body and came up behind him when he hit the ground with his knees, grabbed his long, greasy hair and used it to pull his head back as she slashed his throat so violently that she almost beheaded him.

Hearing the whoosh of another sword stroke, she rolled again sheathing her knives, the sword-slashing into the nearly beheaded fellow with a squelch. She danced away from the burnt man's sloppy sword strokes for several minutes, her mind cold and calculating, and when she twirled once again, she threw one of her throwing knives in the same movement. He yelled as it sank into his eye and Clarissa quickly spun, her leg kicking out and up.

The heel of her boot slammed into the handle of her throwing knife and it sank further. A moment later, the man dropped like a puppet which had had its strings cut. Her gaze left the dead man at her feet and she looked over to the last remaining man. She did not move as he looked back at her. She did, however, smile when he turned and ran. Her bow was removed from its place on her back and an arrow was nocked. It flew true moments later, piercing through the man's back.

Clarissa then spun, another arrow appearing in her hand to nock to her bow as she noticed the sound of another heartbeat.

A wounded, limping man stood before her. Chain mail protected his chest, and a sword was held in his hand. What was most interesting to Clarissa, however, was the clasp that held his cloak together. A cloak-clasp shaped like a six-pointed star.

"Ranger."

* * *

**Author's Note: **Ah, Clarissa is such a badass and I love her. The phasing arm through chest thing was inspired by Fenris from _Dragon Age. _I hope Clarissa isn't seeming too… one punch man? Or at least, if she is, that I'm writing the fights interestingly enough that people like it, anyway.

Also: Timey-wimey! Time travel hurts my head to think about, and for some reason, I decided to make a character with the ability. Anyway, if I didn't have Clarissa explain it probably, here's how I have time travel, working in this series. What has happened cannot be changed. Only something right here and now can. So, for example, Clarissa sees someone die. She cannot then go back in time and prevent it from happening because it has already happened.

My Arda exists on a single timeline, so my Shadow Walkers cannot change something in the past because that would then create another timeline. However, on the other hand, they can only change the future if they hadn't seen it. Because to a Shadow Walker, the future can also be the past, with how they jump about. Forwards is backwards and backwards is forwards, that sort of thing. So, Clarissa might know about one future, but she hadn't actually seen it so she doesn't know what will happen, thus why she can change it.

If something has happened, regardless of if it's in the past or future, it's set. The future is only changeable when it's unknown. I don't know if I explained it probably, or just made it worse, so I'll stop. If you have any questions, however, let me know!


	7. Suantraí A Chanadh

**Author's Note: **A shorter chapter than usual, but I hope it's still good!

* * *

**Through the Valley of Shadows**

**Chapter Seven  
****Suantraí A Chanadh  
**_to sing a lullaby_

**(Aldëa the 20th of Súlimë, Third Age 2941. Chetwood, Eriador, Middle Earth.)**

**The **pestle was moved absentmindedly, the club-shaped bottom stained red from the crushed blackberries and the few teaspoons worth of flour in the bottom of the mortar. After a few more minutes had passed, Clarissa finally stopped crushing the now smooth paste and carefully tipped the contents of the mortar into a small jar. The mortar and pestle were then placed on the grassy earth beside her, where sat many other jars that all contained different colours of homemade paint.

She momentarily glanced over her shoulder and smiled at the sight of Fenrir laying under the shade of the nearby trees. The warg hadn't moved in the last two hours, perfectly content to sleep the day away, especially after he had become Clarissa's mount and spent the last few weeks running her across the map as she did the old little jobs she had picked up.

'_Who needs a horse when you can have a Gundabad warg instead.' _

Turning back to face the hillocks, Clarissa pulled a small brush made of oak and animal hair from her rucksack. A journal was laid out opened across her lap and covering one of the pages was the charcoal portrait of a woman that looked almost exactly the same as the Shadow Walker herself, except for the few small differences. The smaller ears were one, while the scars that decorated her face were another. There was one small scar that cut across a cheek and another larger one that cut across the skin above and below an eye.

She had always wondered how her mother hadn't managed to lose her eye when she had gotten that particular scar.

Dipping her brush into the freshly made red paint, Clarissa then carefully went across the white of the page that was contained within the charcoal lines she had made for the portrait's hair. The watercolour effect berries often made was her favourite way to paint. She just liked how it looked when it was all done.

She hummed the tune of her mother's favourite lullaby under her breath as she worked, gently swaying with the wind as she did.

It didn't feel as though it had been seven years since her mother had unexpectedly passed away, but the Shadow Walker had been on Arda now for almost three, living on a straight path of time without a single answer to any of the questions she had set out to have answered. She dragged her brush across the portrait's eyebrows, painting them that little bit of red.

Twirling the brush in a nearby jar, she watched as the water inside turned a light pinkish-red as the paint washed off. Sat under the Twilight tree with her mother had always been one of her favourite past times. She took to sitting under it on the anniversary of her mother's death each year she could, just to think back on the memories. Now she didn't think that she would ever see it again. It was a feeling she had been experiencing for a while now, at least a year and a half, that everything back home was now unreachable to her.

Fingers brushed against the rock against her chest. _'At least I have this.' _Her mother's necklace was all she had left now. Mismatched eyes flickered across to where her rucksack was propped up beside a rock. Safety contained within a box inside was a silver flute covered in ivy-like patterns. Her mother's flute. She had that too.

With a sigh, Clarissa turned back to the journal on her lap and after making sure all the red had been washed off her brush, she opened the jar that contained green paint she had made from the spinach that she had left over from the stew she had made the previous night. It didn't exactly make the shade of green she had wanted, but she hadn't had anything else.

Her mother's evergreen eyes were hard to achieve.

The faint sound of footsteps across the fallen leaves and small twigs immediately caught Clarissa's attention. She heard Fenrir sit up from where he had been laying and make a low growl noise in the back of his throat. A warning to the person who had stopped a few feet away from where the Shadow Walker and her companion were.

The elderly man with the long grey beard and equally long hair that was just as grey. The man dressed in simple faded grey robes which were stained near the hem from many travels. In fact, everything about the man was grey. Even his eyes. There was no blue hat in sight. He was so much taller than her, especially when she was sat down, and she had to crank her head up to meet his wise old eyes, with her own widening as she did.

"Mithrandir."

He smiled, and there was a twinkle of something in his eyes that she couldn't quite pin an emotion to.

"Why my dear, I certainly didn't expect to find you here."

She was so caught up in the fact that Gandalf the Grey, wandering wizard, was stood right in front of her that it took a few moments before she fully realised what he had said to her. _How _he had said it, as though he already knew her and had seen her before. Being a Shadow Walker, it was entirely possible but… she didn't think that was it.

"I've never met you before."

Gandalf hummed under his breath; bushy eyebrows pulled down slightly as he stared her. Examining her. His eyes swept up and down her frame. The flower crown perched on the top of her head, the braids among her loose white-blonde hair and the small silver rings that decorated the sides of her long, pointed ears. The metal cuff attached to the tip of her right. He took longer examining the whorls and curlicues that were spread out across her left arm and the healed scar that took up most of the space on her right forearm.

"I see," he finally replied as he gave her a long, contemplating look. "You have forgotten your time here."

Clarissa's eyes flickered down to the portrait of her mother and her attention fixated on the smallest hint of smaller elven ears poked through the red of her hair. Her mind momentarily lost in a myriad of emotions, doubts, and questions. She had long since speculated that it _was_ on Arda that her mother had been separated from her father, the pointy ears and all, but…

She shook her head. "What time here?"

The wizard gave a long hum again, and she stared up at him. "I believe you have already figured out some of it for yourself."

"All I remember is a name. Silas."

"As good a start as any."

She raked her fingers through her head with a faint, weak laugh as she considered her situation. She had been searching for Gandalf for years now, on and off between other things, and suddenly when she wasn't looking for him, he finds _her. _In Chetwood of all places. She flicked the tip of her tongue across her dry bottom lip.

"You know I've been looking for you for some time now. Since I got here actually. Cause you see, I was most definitely human before I arrived."

"You were only a quarter the last time I saw you." His voice was kind as he peered down at her, leaning against his staff as he was. At least he was better at telling her things than Fallelm had been. The ent had been short and to the point, not bothering to linger much to consider emotions. She had woken the cranky ent and bothered him with questions after all.

She was surprised he hadn't just thrown her from the forest headfirst.

"Ma was a Peredhel?"

A frown crossed his face as he noted the past tense. She stared up at him and knew that he had known her mother once upon a time. No doubt he had known where she had gotten all her scars from. Her necklace. The flute. All the things that Clarissa herself had never gotten an answer for. She couldn't help but feel a little bitter at the fact. Her mother had been her best friend, and she had always told her everything. It hurt to think she hadn't warranted the same, but then she thought of how her mother had tried and Clarissa had forgotten.

"How long have you been alone, my dear?"

Her eyelashes fluttered in surprise. No-one had asked her that question before. "Seven years. Well, six, actually. Léofa kept me company for a year. Somehow that stubborn ranger roped me into travelling around with him for a bit before he had to go back to the north for something or other."

Gandalf laughed, low and quiet. "That is good." He then looked behind her. "And the warg?"

Clarissa peered over her shoulder, smiling as she noted that Fenrir had somehow managed to get behind her without her noticing him. He was practically one with the shadows by this point. She turned slightly, moving her arm up so that she brushed her fingers through his fur. Her previous answer had been wrong. It hadn't been six years, but four. Fenrir had been there for her ever since she had been dropped into Fangorn Forest that first day—albeit with a little of a troublesome start.

"Fenrir, my companion. At least that's what Fallelm had called him."

A bushy eyebrow raised. "Fallelm?"

"An ent I met in Fangorn."

"It seems you have been busy these past three years, my dear."

Clarissa laughed at that. She felt as though she had been busier than she had ever been before. Léofa had most definitely kept her plenty busy as he dragged her around Eriador like a puppy on a leash. Though they had become good friends during the course of their little adventure. Then she blinked. "How do you know how long I've been here?"

"It was quite the light show the night of your arrival, as it always is when a Yucalëedur returns." He noted the puzzled look on her face and smiled that grandfatherly smile once again. "I believe your mother once described the colours as something called an aurora borealis. And then there was the shooting star."

"I… I didn't realise that it looked like that when I jumped."

"It is only when it is a world jump."

She blinked again, before then huffing in faint amusement. She didn't expect to get much in the way of answers from Gandalf, as he was always cryptic with his answers, but so far she had learnt more in two minutes than she had in three whole years. Her mother had been a Peredhel. Granted, she had expected that, but it was confirmation. She had had a life on Arda before but had forgotten it. Another thing she had speculated about, another thing confirmed. One thing she hadn't known about, however, was that she was only a quarter human.

Which meant that her father wasn't one seeing as how her mother was the Peredhel, the half-elf. Silas didn't exactly sound elven though, neither did Emelia nor Clarissa. They were all human names. But then again, some elves did have multiple names; a ataressë, a amilessë, a epessë. Sometimes even a kilmessë. Maybe Silas was one of those.

"I propose to you, my dear, that you accompany me on an adventure. I do believe the answers you are searching for will be found along the way."

Clarissa arched a single eyebrow in response-something that had taken her years to accomplish and something she was oddly proud of-and stared at him. He was still grey. Of course, he was, he hadn't fallen in his pursuit of the balrog yet. It was too early for that. She looked over at Fenrir. He was already staring at her, sunset orange eyes knowing her every thought. The Shadow Walker brushed her fingers through his fur again, taking comfort in the support he provided her with his company.

"Would I be right in assuming this unexpected adventure has something to do with a dragon and a company of thirteen?"

Gandalf blinked but didn't seem overly surprised that Clarissa knew what he was talking about. She absentmindedly realised that she should have stood up by now but she didn't exactly want to. She hoped it was a different adventure. Something without dragons that could barbeque her in seconds. Smaug was the smallest dragon as well. The _smallest _and he could no doubt smush her like a bug under his feet. And then there were the spiders in Taur-nu-Fuin, as big as ponies. Maybe Fenrir could eat them.

It also didn't help that Clarissa hadn't yet figured out which verse she was in. Book? Movie? _Both? _The movie had far too many orcs. The book only had them appearing during the battle of the five armies. And Azog the Defiler was already dead by that point. He probably hadn't gotten his name for defiling altars and holy places either.

Thorin was a right prick in the movies when it came to elves as well and she wasn't about to be hated for something she hadn't done. Wasn't as though she blamed the dwarves in Khazad-dûm for digging too much and unleashing the balrog. It was what they did. Dug. But then again book Thorin wasn't any better considering he had only wanted to kill Smaug not to avenge his forefathers and reclaim his homeland, but to get his hands on the gold Smaug hoarded.

"It'll be very good for you-"

"Please don't finish that with 'and most amusing for me.'"

* * *

**Author's Note: **We're going on an adventure! _Finally_. I would really love it if you guys would let me know your own speculations for what you think is going to happen during this story. Who lives, who dies, what canon the story is following. That sort of thing!

The lullaby Clarissa is humming is Sleepsong from Secret Garden in case anyone was wondering.

**Sindarin  
**Yucalëedur : servant of twilight  
Ataressë : father-name  
Amilessë : mother-name  
Epessë : after-name  
Kilmessë : self-name  
Taur-nu-Fuin : mirkwood

**Khuzdul  
**Khazad-dûm : moria**  
**


	8. Súgradh An Linbh

**Author's Note: **What is this, two chapters in one month and it's the longest chapter yet? It probably won't happen again… I wrote this over the course of three days. I was on a roll; one I hope continues down the line. This is Clarissa's long-anticipated meeting with the company which has honestly gone vastly different from how I originally planned it purely due to a comment I received and liked by **nebulababe** so, shout out to you hun!

* * *

**Through the Valley of Shadows**

**Chapter Eight  
****Súgradh An Linbh  
**_child's play_

**(Aldëa the 29****th**** of Lótessë, Third Age 2941. Trollshaws, Eriador, Middle Earth.)**

**For **a group that were on such an important secret quest to reclaim their homeland as they were, the company of Thorin Oakenshield were almost stupidly easy to track down as they left an obvious trail wherever they went. A child with no tracking no how could have tracked them down. It was no surprise that the orcs kept being able to find them. Bilbo at least was light on his feet as all hobbits were that Clarissa had been unable to find any footprints that looked as though they might have belonged to him.

Gandalf was another matter, but human-sized footprints were more common than dwarf ones, especially in these parts.

Still, she was a month late.

She had missed the party, so there had been no songs for her. Léofa had been to blame initially, of course, considering that the ranger had popped up out of nowhere needing her help with a group of Easterlings that had been terrorising some locals in Bree-land and it had taken longer than they had expected. Thus, her initial lateness. But then there had also been the orcs. The company were definitely being hunted down as she had deposed of two packs already. Fenrir had killed more than his fair share as well.

She had quite enjoyed the looks of surprise on their faces once they had realised that the Gundabad warg was on _her _side.

The company being unknowingly hunted down, however, meant one thing to the Shadow Walker. That the journey she would be joining involved Azog and his claw arm. She would have much preferred it if he had already had his head cut off by Dáin II Ironfoot during the battle of Azanulbizar and the only orcs she had to worry about were at the end. But no, she had to endure Peter Jackson and his many, many orcs. Which also meant that Thorin was more than likely a moody king with a steel rod up his arse towards anything with pointy ears.

Fantastic.

Clarissa really hoped that Gandalf had at least told the company that she was to be a part of their quest as well. Given Thorin and the others some time to stew over the fact that a mibilkhaga was coming along with them to Azsâlul'abad. Although she should probably keep the dwarven to a minimum of something close to nonexistence while in their company. Dwarves were so very secretive after all, unwilling to teach even their closest friends the language, keeping even their names hidden.

Someone would no doubt drive their sword through her chest if she started spurting her knowledge of all the Khuzdul she had learnt over the years.

Fenrir came to an abrupt stop and her body jerked as she was thrown forward slightly from the momentum. They had finally found the company's camp. But it was empty. Clarissa quickly dismounted and with a nod, the warg disappeared into the forest. He needed little direction from her these days, seemingly knowing her mind with just a look. There was probably no-one that knew her as well as the Gundabad warg did. Clarissa needed to find the dwarves and Fenrir was on the lookout for the orc pack no doubt behind them.

However, with one call and he would be back at her side within moments.

She quickly examined the campsite, noting the still-burning fire and the supply packs that had been strewn about the place. Bowls of stew had been left on fallen logs and stumps that had no doubt acted as seats for the company. She glanced towards the forest and that was when she saw it. The red light that shone through the tree-trunks ahead.

'_Cunús trolls!'_

The Shadow Walker pulled the bow from her back. Moving silently through the darkness, she skilfully followed the obvious path the dwarves had taken, her eyes easily finding their most recent footprints in the low light. Her boots made no sound as she raced through the trees, the shadows concealing her from sight.

Moving towards the firelight in the distance, she soon came upon the camp to find that the company had already been captured. They had all been stripped of their outer clothes, leaving them in their smallclothes and boots, but other than that, they wore nothing. All of them, however, had been shoved into burlap sacks and thrown on top of each other in a piled heap. The trolls themselves had sat down around a large fire of beech-logs, roasting mutton on long spits of wood as they discussed how best to cook the company.

Mutton that had no doubt come from the company's missing ponies. Which confused Clarissa, who now had no idea what could happen on the journey as it seemed _both _verses were existing at the same time in a mishmash. Which was just what she needed because now she had to be prepared for the possibility that it _all _could happen somewhere down the line.

If Bombur fell into the enchanted waters of Taur-nu-Fuin, she was most definitely not helping to carry him around.

With a sigh at the thought, Clarissa silently manoeuvred up into a nearby tree that had a branch that extended towards the camp just slightly. She crouched down and scanned the area. The dwarves were all wiggling in their sacks like worms, loudly complaining at the trolls, who for the most part ignored them. Bilbo and Thorin were both unsurprisingly silent. The carcasses of what had been the company's ponies were also in a pile near where the trolls sat. It was a shame that they hadn't just bolted but at least the trolls hadn't wasted them.

She had always been taught that if she killed something, then she should make use of everything. The meat, skin and even the bones could all be used in some form or another. The bodies of people she had killed, on the other hand, she usually just pillaged for anything of use, stripped off their clothes, and then left for the animals to pick at. She didn't burn bodies.

Moving her arm back she pulled a large rock she had picked up off the ground out from a pocket of her rucksack, which she then hurled in the direction of some bushes some distance from the tree she was perched in. It made a loud thud as it landed; the foliage shaking from the force.

"Wha' was that!" yelled one of the trolls.

"Are there any more of your sort a-sneaking' round?" another asked the dwarves.

A chorus of denial echoed around the camp as Clarissa nocked an arrow from her quiver and drew the bowstring back until it was pressed against her cheek.

She watched and waited as the trolls argued over what had caused the noise before finally one was pushed and shoved by the others until he began to make his way through the bushes, his eyes squinted as he attempted to locate the source of the noise. Not that he, or any of them for that matter, could actually see anything that wasn't lit by the firelight of the camp. The shadows that she had cast consumed any hint of light that might have shone down through the treetops. The forest itself had been blanketed in complete darkness.

It was just too bad for the trolls that that was where Clarissa thrived.

One she had determined that the troll had gotten further enough away from the camp, she gave a quick, commanding whistle. It attracted his attention immediately and his head snapped up towards the noise. His eyes scanned the treetops, and she released the arrow. Her aim was true, landing the shot squarely in the eye of the troll who immediately slackened. Then with a long, pained moan, he collapsed to the ground with a thundering thud that travelled through the ground and vibrated up the tree she was in.

A troll's hide was near impenetrable and they had the ability to regenerate on top of that. Their eyes, however, didn't offer the same protection. They were just the perfect, squishy place for an arrow to pierce through into the brain. Mouth too. The ear canal was another good place if one had something long enough.

"'ever mind seasonin' 'em. We ain't got all night to cook 'em. Dawn ain't far away an' I don't fancy bein' turned to stone."

Bilbo's eyes widened, and he jumped up in his burlap sack with a cry as he attempted to delay the trolls. Clarissa smiled at the sight. While he did that, he would also unwittingly serve another purpose as a direction for her so that she could deal with the other trolls one by one. No point in taking them both on together when she could separate them.

With her bow once again attached to the back of her rucksack, she jumped down from the tree. She landed on the ground without so much as a rustle of the fallen leaves beneath her boots, nor so much as a rattle from the quiver that dangled behind her right hip. She felt like Tinkerbell, hovering above the earth. Cautiously and quickly, Clarissa travelled some two hundred yards out from the left side of the camp relative to the boulders that acted as a shield for the trolls from the rising sun.

Cupping her hands together, Clarissa blew air through a small gap, her fingers moving as needed. The familiar sound of a nightingale echoed through the treetops and Fenrir appeared at her side almost instantaneously. She then used him to pull down a pair of flexible saplings that were just tall enough to get at a troll. She tied them down using a rope which was then attached to another tree further behind that acted as a counterweight. Between the tops of the saplings, she tied one of her greatest assets. Mithril thread.

It had been a gift from Léofa some months back for saving his life as apparently a lot of rangers used it.

The thread itself was flat like a small double-edged blade but as thick as rope. The tops of the trees rested against the forest floor like ordinary bushes just waiting to be released. Her hope was that the contraption would act as a giant guillotine that would penetrate the troll's fleshy neck. Only two out of the three trolls now remained so luring one of them from the camp with another distraction should be easy enough for her to accomplish. Then that would ultimately leave one left in the camp.

Fenrir slunk off back into the darkness of the trees. It would do no good if someone saw him just yet, although she still hadn't thought much about how she was going to approach the company about the warg that kept her company. She'd deal with it later. Or make Gandalf, he had been the one to invite her after all.

The Shadow Walker headed back towards the camp, only coming to a stop by some bushes beside the boulders. An assortment of weapons had been piled up near it. At least the dwarves had actual weapons with them. In the books beside the few knives they carried, they had nothing else, instead deciding to carry around various musical instruments. She had often wondered if they had thought to kill Smaug with flutes, clarinets, violins, drums and a harp.

Later on, Thorin had gotten his sword and the others bows, but still. Priorities.

"Nothing wrong with a bit o' raw dwarf!" a troll exclaimed gleefully as he snatched up Bombur from the pile of wiggly dwarves. The fat dwarf's looped and braided beard dangled down grotesquely. He babbled frantically in fear and just as Bilbo opened his mouth in another attempt to save them, a voice called out from the shadows.

"I got more 'ere!"

The shadows whispered in her ears as the voice of the troll she had killed echoed around the camp; her left arm as bright as starlight. The idea had, of course, come from Gandalf tricking the trolls in the books. She had only recently discovered the ability as well, the ability to make the shadows imitate someone's voice. It had saved Léofa's life when he had become swarmed by goblins that had taken to living in the tunnels in the mountains. The new voice had distracted the goblins just enough for the ranger to get the upper hand.

She really hoped someone had a book on Shadow Walkers somewhere or something so she could find out exactly what she could do.

"Tom, go help!"

"Why? We 'ave plenty 'ere."

"Go!"

The smallest of the trolls grumbled under his breath as the echoing voice lured him into the woods and away from the safety of the camp. Once he was deep enough in the foliage, Clarissa pulled back the shadows that surrounded the immediate area and allowed herself to be seen again. It took a moment, but eventually, the troll finally noticed her.

"I found a girlie!"

Her nimble feet carried her through the forest at a swift pace and she weaved and dodged the obstacles between her and her goal. Immediately behind her, she could hear thunderous footsteps and heavy breathing. Trolls were made for brute force, but their stamina laid more in beating things with their fists than their feet. She had so much to thank Léofa for after he had decided to give her lessons on the creatures of Arda. Now, all that knowledge was written down in her bestiary. Even her herbiary had been updated.

She could hear the troll crashing through the trees, crushing what had been obstacles for her only moments before. The sound of a fallen log she had passed breaking violently spurred her into running faster. She wasn't becoming jelly. A troll's immunity to the smaller trappings of the forest made them quite the adversary. The logs and rocks she passed were nothing to the troll, and she was thankful when she finally spotted the fake bushes. Her trap laid only a couple of yards away. Just a little further…

"'old still you little-"

Clarissa dropped to her knees and slide along the dirt surface as she cut the rope holding back the trees with the fighting-knife from her thigh sheath. Her fall had caused the troll to speed up, no doubt thinking that he had captured her. The trees released and flew back into their standing position. The tautness of the mithril thread produced a snap as it lodged itself in the troll's neck. Despite it not being a direct shot to the brain, the troll's regenerative factor was unable to heal a wound of its magnitude.

She had watched Léofa use a similar tactic with a cave-troll.

The thread became coated with black blood and with a sickening slurp noise came out the back of his neck, twanging slightly as it did. His face was the perfect expression of surprise as his head rolled from his shoulders. The head thumped to the ground, but like before, it was nothing compared to the noise his body made when it too fell the ground. Trolls were all so loud, both dead and alive. By the Valar, they smell dreadful as well. It was the stench of decay and rotting flesh along with an almost fruity smell of wilting flowers.

With a shake of her head, Clarissa looked up at the thread as it glistened despite the black liquid that dripped from it. It didn't take long for her to work the thread out of the tree, after which she wiped the blood off on her leggings as they needed washing anyway, and then recoiled the thread back up before shoving it into her rucksack.

The sound of rustling bushes and movement in her peripheral then caught her attention, and she spun around just as the ferns were pulled back to reveal a troublesome wizard in grey. Gandalf seemed equally startled by her appearance as she had his. Then his gaze fell down slightly and his bushy eyebrows raised as he noticed the eleven-and-a-half-inch knife that hovered just inches from his heart. There were roughly eight inches in height between the pair, but Clarissa had always been good at determining height from footfalls.

The wizard was just lucky she had managed to stop herself in time.

"It is good to see that you have finally arrived, my dear, although this is not how I expected to find you."

Relaxing with a sigh, she resheathed the blade. "I arrived precisely as I meant to."

The corner of Gandalf's mouth tugged upward as he noted the lie and considering that she had told him that she would meet the company at Bilbo's hobbit-hole, it was no wonder why, really. Her attention then momentarily flickered to the side as she noted the sun had finally made an appearance. Within seconds the beheaded troll behind her turned to stone and the sound it made drew the attention of Gandalf who walked over to where the head had dropped after she had cut it off. He then knocked the end of his staff against the side of it.

"Thorin and his merry band of idiots needed saving." She shrugged as he raised his eyebrows at her. "There's still another troll in the camp with them."

Gandalf sighed. "Then we should go and rescue them."

The wizard began to head off towards where the camp was, before then stopping as he noticed that Clarissa hadn't moved from where she stood.

"Are you not coming with, my dear?" the wizard asked with a frown.

Clarissa smiled mischievously, the silver flecks in her eyes giving off a shimmering sparkle. "I'll introduce myself to the company at a later date."

She then nodded at Gandalf and slipped back into the shadows before he could say another word. She then began to follow the path of destruction the troll had left behind in his pursuit of her. Several trees had been scrapped raw and at least two large boulders were now in a crumbled mess of different-sized rock. Eventually, she came across large footprints that could belong to the trolls themselves which then lead her up the hill where hidden behind some bushes she found a big door of stone that covered the entrance of a cave.

A door of which she didn't have the key for as she hadn't killed that particular troll.

Clarissa sighed before then tilting her head to the side. Perhaps she could… She inhaled, her eyes closing with a flutter of lashes. Immediately she was met with the cold, familiar nothingness that greeted her each time she jumped. The air shuddered around her body. When she opened her eyes, she was no longer stood outside the cave, but instead inside it. Misty tendrils of black curled away from her and retreated back to the shadows as she stepped forward.

There was an overwhelming stench radiating from the muggy earth, but she had smelt far worse. Bones littered the floor under her feet. Chests of gold were strewn about the place, but the majority of it littered the ground, forgotten. Trolls flocked to shiny things like magpies, but they didn't hoard gold exclusively like dwarves. They were more akin to scavengers, willing to take whatever came their way. It would appear that a couple of the trolls' victims had been very wealthy. The large crates near the walls lead her to believe a caravan must have suffered at their hands. Owen had mentioned a shipment that had never arrived when she had been in Bree some weeks back.

He had hoped that she could find it during her travels for him. She might have done just that, but it would be some time before the fence found out about it.

Her attention turned back to the gold, gold she knew that the dwarves would bury soon. The race had such an unhealthy affection for the stuff. She herself didn't much have use for it. She slept in the woods, hunted her own food, tended to her own clothes. The only things she had ever needed gold for were weapons and things of that nature. Occasionally she would see something that would take her fancy, or she needed more fabric, but for the most part, she had little need for the stuff.

Deeper into the cave were several more chests overflowing with gold and silver, but there was something else that caught her attention more. In the back and along a side wall, there was an open trunk overfilled with clothes on top of a crate of what smelt like old spices. A shame they had gone to waste as they had. From the condition of the clothes, they appeared to be dresses that had been ripped into rags by the trolls. The ground itself was littered with pieces of rich fabric made of what once would have been lovely gowns. And on the ground in front of the crate was a small knit hat too small to be for anything other than a baby.

She closed her eyes momentarily and turned her head away. She could only hope that they had found peace.

Then her thoughts were torn from the hat as she heard it. Whispers. The faint, eerie whisperings of something calling out to her, beckoning her to it. She looked around and found herself drawn further back into the cave where everything looked older, more dilapidated and covered in centuries' worth of cobwebs that told her that the trolls hadn't been back there in some time. If at all. It was almost as if she was being pulled forward by an invisible force with each step she took, as though she was in a trance that she couldn't break free from.

A shiver of foreboding went down her spine, but she suppressed it.

Crouching down, she brushed aside the cobwebs that covered the lower wall of the cave. A small spider crawled across her fingertips and she watched it for a moment, before gently coaxing the spider onto a box that laid nearby. Then, on a slight elevation, halfway behind planks of rotted wood and more cobwebs, she found the smooth surface of leather. Leather that disintegrated almost completely under her touch, the ancient's old animal skin so porous that it was no longer able to withstand any strain upon it.

Her fingers then came into contact with the cool smoothness of metal and immediately after a cold, biting chill that was all too familiar to her. Before she could think anything of it, it was gone again. Dismissing it, she tilted her head as she just about made out a long blade underneath the ruined scabbard. She followed the length of the blade with her fingers until she came to the hilt and gripping it; she lifted the sword from its resting place.

The action tore the sword from most of the remnants of its scabbard although a few rope-like pieces that seemed to be attached to something else as well hung to the pommel. When the sword couldn't be lifted any higher, as it seemed to be caught on something, she gave it a yank that caused her to pull another artefact from the elevated alcove in the rock. A loud, metallic clattering sound along with the tearing of rotten wooden echoed throughout the cave.

Clarissa picked up what she had caused to fall to the cave floor and was surprised to find that it was another scabbard, one made of silver metal. It was an odd scabbard, to say the least, considering that most of the back of it was cut out so that it would show whatever was inside it, in this case just blueish-silver leather as it had no sword. The leather then continued on after the cut-out, with more silver metal making very elven-like patterns across the top, just underneath the cut-out, and across the bottom of the scabbard that made up the chape.

It was beautifully made and clearly crafted by master smiths, but still odd.

She then finally turned her attention to the sword and was awed by what she found. It was a magnificent thing, almost two feet long in length, including the hilt. The pommel was formed almost like a silver crown or a flower bud with an ice blue jewel inside of it that poked out ever so slightly. The grip was made out of the same blueish silver leather as the scabbard. The grip curved down, with a few sharp-looking points across the top and bottom of the sides. Another smaller jewel of the same colour sat in the centre of it.

Clarissa ran her fingers across the blade where blue patterns and runes were etched into the cold metal, runes she could not read.

A loud rumbling as the cave door was opened drew her attention away from the sword and the Shadow Walker cursed herself for not having heard the company nearing. Most people got distracted by beautiful people. Clarissa got distracted by beautiful weapons. Gagging and retching and sounds of revulsion echoed throughout the cave as the company descended inside with their torches and she disappeared into the shadows, the sword in the scabbard and the scabbard in hand before any of them had even noticed she was there.

Cautiously and silently, she made her way back to the entrance of the cave only to then immediately press herself to the nearby wall as Thorin Oakenshield in all his majestic _grumpiness _came stomping past her, a lit torch in hand. He set it down to the side before picking up two swords, covered in dirt, dust, and cobwebs, while to the other side of her, Nori, Bofur, and Glóin had begun digging a hole to bury a chest filled with gold. She rolled her eyes to the side, only to then be caught off guard by Gandalf's gaze on her.

She winked at him and he chuckled under his breath before he too went over to the racks of swords.

Then Bilbo, brass buttons on his waistcoat, walked past her. All three foot two of him. The top of his head barely brushed the tips of her elbows. The Shadow Walker tilted her head to the side slightly as she watched the hobbit join Thorin and Gandalf nearby the weapons. There was something different about the future ring bearer that she couldn't quite place her finger on.

Clarissa stared after the hobbit as though he were a puzzle for her to solve. He picked up the small dagger that would one day be named Sting and she shook her head. It was more than likely that she was simply overthinking things. Besides, she would have more than enough time to figure out if there was more than meets the eye to Bilbo Baggins.

She slipped past the members of the company nearby and out the mouth of the cave.

Clarissa then shrugged off her rucksack and set it down behind a tree that was some distance from the rest of the company. No longer on her person, it became visible in the seen realm and there was no sense leaving it where one of them was going to trip over it. It took a bit of fiddling around with her harness, but Clarissa was eventually able to attach the scabbard to her back. She tested her balance with it for a moment or two and found nothing much had changed. It was lighter than her rucksack and that didn't much affect her either.

Then the forest came alive with the sound of crashing undergrowth and birds trilling a warning, taking to the air in a flurry of wings and shrill cries. Clarissa briefly wondered if Radagast would allow her to pet his rabbits, as they had looked far too adorable to her during the film, but she shook the thought away. She didn't plan to reveal herself to the company just yet. With the incoming orc pack tensions would be too high for the mysterious final member of their company to pop up out of the blue. She had no doubt that someone would be confident in their belief that she was in league with the foul creatures.

The only 'evil' creature the Shadow Walker was in league with was Fenrir and he had taken far too many mud baths as a cub for her to ever consider him the same.

"Something is coming!"

The dwarves quickly took up their weapons at Thorin's warning and made for a more defendable position while Clarissa pulled the straps of her rucksack back over her shoulders. She then pulled the bow from her back as she turned to keep an eye out for the wargs that would soon be making an appearance. While there had only been two wargs in the movie, Clarissa had also come across too many orc packs recently to be confident that the number would remain the same. It could be two, but it could also be more.

Then burst a herd of huge rabbits from the bushes, followed by a peculiar wizard on a wooden sleigh that was built from whimsically formed branches. The man looked as old as Gandalf himself as did his worn, brown robes that came with a hat that reminded her of Bofur's. Then there was the large smearing of bird droppings along the side of his face. He slid slowly past the dwarves who had managed to make the most distance, Thorin included. He then shouted about thieves, fire, and murder before Gandalf approached him.

"Radagast! It's Radagast the Brown!"

The wizard sheathed his sword and the company all stood stalk still as they clutched tightly to their weapons, most of them confused about the turn of events. Bilbo stood beside Fíli with his mouth open as his eyes darted back and forth between the two wizards. Clarissa then wiggled her nose as Gandalf pulled a stick insect from Radagast's mouth.

Then, after a moment, Gandalf led the other wizard away so that they could converse alone, out of earshot.

Clarissa shook her head at the mannerisms of the peculiar brown wizard before then turning back around to scan the trees in search of wargs that were not her own. Thorin knew he had a bounty on his head from what she could remember so why he hadn't taken care to make sure that his company were not so easily trackable she had no idea. It was just making more work for her. It wasn't as though he would appreciate it either. She had pointed ears and in the eyes of the exiled king that made her the scum of the earth.

Her ears then twitched as she caught a snippet of the wizard's conversation and she froze at the different dialogue, a cold shiver travelling down her spine at the brown wizard's words.

"_He_ knows one of them have returned, Gandalf."

A keening howling in the distance then rippled through the air. Thorin and the rest of the company tensed in recognition of the noise. Clarissa immediately moved into action, narrowing her eyes in the direction it had come from and swiftly nocking an arrow. It had come from the wrong direction. The first warg had been behind the company, not to the side. A low growl caused her ears to twitch again and the Shadow Walker quickly spun as she spotted the warg that was crouched in preparation for an attack behind Thorin and Dwalin.

She immediately released her arrow, and it entered the warg's opened mouth. The momentum the warg had caused the body to slide to Thorin's feet, who quickly looked up and towards the direction of where her arrow had come, but then the loud snapping of a twig along with a low growl caused them all to turn. Another warg had snuck up along the back gulch but before the beast could pounce at the dwarves, Fenrir appeared in a wispy cloud of tendrils and tackled the other warg to the ground.

The black warg's gnashing jaws clamped down around the other's neck and with a loud crunch, it dropped dead.

The twang of a bowstring then echoed through the air and Clarissa quickly moved, throwing one of her throwing knives at the arrow. It split it in half which caused it to shift its course and miss its mark. Her knife hit a tree with a loud thud. She saw red for a brief moment as she turned to glare at the company's only archer, whose eyes had widened at the sight.

"Do not shoot that one!" Gandalf yelled as the wizards, who had been occupied until now, made a sudden reappearance.

Dwalin spun around to glare at the wizard, his axe pointed in Fenrir's direction. "It is a warg!"

She exhaled deeply and calmed herself down. Clarissa then pulled the hood of her cloak up over her head so that it covered the majority of her face before stepping forward to receive her knife. The shadows were then pulled back, and the company recoiled and shouted bemusements and curses at her sudden appearance.

"Yes," she then said as she returned the knife to the pouch on her thigh. "Do _not _shoot that one, little Durin."

"_Who _are you?" Thorin spat with all the fury of a thousand suns.

She glanced over her shoulder slightly, looking down at the dwarf and not at all fazed by his tone. Her mother had had a terrible angry voice that made the entire house feel as though its very foundation was crumbling underneath their feet from the force of her voice. Clarissa had only ever made her mother angry once, and that had been more than enough for her.

"You can call me Nightingale."

Clarissa smiled from beneath the shadows of her hood and saw more than a few of the company nervously eye her enlarged canines. Their eyes shifted rapidly between her cloaked form and the warg that had ripped apart another in front of them, his sunset orange eyes focused on them, assessing them in case they suddenly turned into threats. Fenrir was extremely untrusting to strangers. It had taken Léofa more than four weeks to get the warg to stop snarling at him if he got too close.

Gandalf sighed as he moved forward to defuse the situation. He rested against his staff and gestured a hand at the Shadow Walker.

"Thorin, I would like to introduce you to the last member of this company."

Radagast the Brown stared intently at her and her gaze momentarily flickered over to him. A warm sensation then spread across her chest and without looking she knew that somehow her necklace had begun to glow ever so slightly beneath her clothes and cloak, besides it being further cloaked by shadows as a form of protection.

Then it was gone as quick as it had appeared, and the brown wizard smiled leaving Clarissa puzzled by the entire chain of events. Although one thought ran through her mind as Radagast continued to smile at her and that was that wizards were far too much trouble to be around.

"A witch," Dori said as he moved to cover his youngest brother, his eyes narrowed as he glared at her.

Her eyebrows raised behind her hood in amusement as someone else in the group called her a servant of darkness. She could see that she was going to get along with the company swimmingly. She couldn't wait until they discovered she had pointed ears. But they should really be on their way, she had caused more than enough of a delay.

"You're being hunted, Thorin Oakenshield. I suggest you start running."

Thorin glowered and Dwalin's grasp shifted ever so slightly on the handle of his axe. She absentmindedly realised that the dwarves had no doubt taken her words as a threat to their king's safety. She rolled her eyes at that as if she had wanted Thorin dead he no doubt would already be dead. It wasn't as though he could see through the veil to the unseen realm.

"We will never outrun them on foot," Balin spoke up, shaking his head.

"I'll draw them off," Radagast replied. Without any confirmation, he started moving towards his sleigh.

"These are Gundabad wargs. They will outrun you," Gandalf retorted. Clarissa couldn't help the twitch of her lips as Radagast confidently replied that he would like to see them try and outrun his Rhosgobel rabbits. He probably could have been able to lead the orc pack away from the company completely if he hadn't kept unknowingly running into them.

At that thought…

Fenrir then moved forward and most of the company did the same, their weapons at the ready. The warg snarled his teeth at them briefly before then crouching down so that Clarissa could climb up onto his back. At six foot five the warg was now far taller than the Shadow Walker herself. It did make for quite the picture though.

"I'll help the wizard." She then nodded at Radagast. "Lead the way."

* * *

**Author's Note: **All hail Clarissa, the shooter of eyeballs! Fear her arrows and knives for no eyeball human or otherwise is safe from her aim. Also, canon diversion! In the books, Gandalf already knows about Sauron as it's been his quest for almost two thousand years. I wanted to keep that, but I also wanted Radagast to make an appearance. The mishmash of book and movie? The scenes are pretty much the ones I prefer or think make for more action and thus more interesting situations I can then place Clarissa in the middle of.

The scabbard and design of the sword she found? Totally inspired by a fanon picture of the sword that I found online along with the design of the sword of vengeance in _Middle Earth: Shadows of War _as I couldn't find much at all regarding the sword's original description. I feel like a golden warrior when I walk around in that set. Anyway, the sword is inspired but not completely the same. It's silver instead for one thing. I just thought that worked better considering, well you'll see soon enough.

Once again, it is question time and this time I have **three **questions for my viewers!

1) Who can guess which sword it is that Clarissa has taken?

2) What's the something different about Bilbo that she can't figure out?

3) What are your favourite scenes from either the books or the films?

**Khuzdul  
**Mibilkhaga - tree fucker  
Azsâlul'abad - the lonely mountain

**Irish  
**Cunús : bastard

**Sindarin  
**Taur-nu-Fuin : mirkwood


	9. Na Daoine Go Léir A Rith

**Author's Note: **Run boy run!

* * *

**Through the Valley of Shadows**

**Chapter Nine  
****Na Daoine Go Léir A Rith  
**_all those who ran_

**(Menelya the 30****th**** of Lótessë, Third Age 2941. Somewhere in Eastern Eriador, Middle Earth.)**

**The **sun had begun to disappear beneath the horizon, painting the skies a warm orange as it awaited the arrival of the moon. It would have been a beautiful day indeed, if not for the howls that echoed through the air, the pounding of countless large paws on the rocks and grass and the shouts of orcs in a language considered too foul to hear, let alone speak.

It had been hours.

Hours upon hours of continuous, none stop running with orc packs on her tail as she attempted to lure them away from the trail of the fleeing company. For the most part, she had been relatively successful. A few members of the pack had even been taken out as she sat backwards on Fenrir, firing arrow after arrow at their wargs, but more continued to appear. It would have all no doubt went more smoothly if Radagast hadn't unknowingly crossed the company's path, time and time again.

The company then had to stop and turn around, which put them in Clarissa's path more times than not. It was all initially too stressful as the company hadn't bathed in what smelt like weeks and the wargs kept catching hints of their scent. She was running out of arrows, her quiver only held thirty-five and she had gone through twelve already.

She hoped that the company took the time to actually clean themselves thoroughly and not just mess around in the Imladris fountain naked. Maybe she could get Elrond to make them something with meat, just to see if that would make them less inclined to be improper guests. It didn't say much when their _king _acted just as bad as the rest of them.

The princelings at least smelt a little better, but that had no doubt been the result of the river they had almost drowned in some days back.

Could she get Bilbo to learn how to swim? Granted, it was more a thing that the Stoors did and not the Harfoots, but considering that one way they could be leaving Taur-nu-Fuin was through the barrel water ride, swimming was a thing that the young hobbit would need to know how to do.

And learn how to use his sword-dagger.

Maybe she could teach him that too. It could be fun, she had never had a pupil before, and she had always had a soft spot for the young Baggins hobbits. The company were going to be involved in a huge scale battle in the near future, as well, and although he would no doubt have the ring by then-she really didn't want to go to Orodruin and sort that mess out. It felt wrong on her part if she didn't at least try to teach him something.

She fired her bow, and an arrow flew into the eye of a nearby warg. She watched as it crashed to the ground like a ton of bricks, taking its rider down with it as it then crushed the orc, pinning him under its weight. That made eleven and there were still far too many orcs and wargs about. Where were the twirly whirlies when she needed one?

Still, it was a good thing for the dwarves that they were natural sprinters with an endurance that no-one would have expected from them. No matter what Gimli had said or would say in the future, they were most definitely built for cross-country running as it had been almost seven hours since they started running and not one of them had slowed down. Even Bilbo had kept up with them better than she had expected him to as Gandalf led them over plains and hills.

Clarissa had no idea how much longer the chase would go on for as there hadn't even been one in the books and the one in the movie had been a transition of minutes. At least Fenrir wasn't showing any signs of exhaustion as the Shadow Walker couldn't outrun Gundabad wargs on foot herself-she had been training with Fenrir for years and he was still faster.

She ended up face planting the ground far too many times when the larger warg would end up pouncing on her once he caught up.

Then the pained snarls and screeches of a warg radiated like a beacon towards the company's exact location and Clarissa knew that there was no hope of getting the packs attention back on her now as they all set off in the direction the cries had come from and Radagast disappeared into the horizon. He had done its part. Evidently, she wasn't done, however.

There was still much more work to be done on her part.

She really hated Peter Jackson for the entire situation. Someone should have given him a limit to how many orcs he could add into scenes they hadn't been in before.

Fenrir's paws slammed into the ground as he gave chase to the orc pack that were now solely focused on the company, who she could see off in the distance as they ran like the hounds of hell were on them-which, she guessed, they were. Fenrir was more a hound of the shadows than anything else.

Although Tolkien did often use the shadows as a reference to the darkness, which was an extent of evil….

If Shadow Walkers had been in the original material would he have called _them _evil? Now was probably not the time for such thoughts, however, seeing as how the company were moments away from being ambushed by too many wargs and orcs for them to handle.

Why couldn't she have had a few days of blissful peace between Trollshaws and Imladris?

She was definitely taking a long, hot bath with some soothing tea after all this was done. Forcing her on wargback for hours on end just as the red lady had made her presence known. What she wouldn't give for some chamomile tea right about now. If someone kicked up a fuss over her being in the company after all this… someone was getting stabbed. Dwalin and Thorin were her most likely candidates. She was in no mood for their attitude towards elves.

Especially after all the orc luring, she had been doing in order to save their ungrateful behinds.

Another arrow is fired from her bow and pierced into the back of an orc's head-ten-and he tumbled from his warg, which turned to snarl and snap at the air before rushing towards her. The company looked like headless chickens beneath her as they spun around and around as they took note of the orcs that surrounded them from all sides. They had all taken up their arms once more but none of the creatures were close enough for anyone but Kíli to deal with them, which did nothing to deter the pack who pressed the group further and further back, forcing them into a close circle that pressed them together.

Fenrir pounced on the other warg just as Clarissa flipped into the air over the two and slid down the hill, jumping onto a nearby boulder that allowed her an easier line of sight to fire at the wargs that came closer to the company. The mangy creatures dropped like flies but the wargs with riders were smart enough to stay further enough away that they were out of her range, as they simply waited for her to run out of arrows as she shot at the rest of their pack.

"Where's Gandalf?" one of the company called out, causing her ears to twitch.

"He's abandoned us!"

They were all so quick to judge that the Shadow Walker almost rolled her eyes, before the sight of a warg about to pounce on Thorin caught her attention and her bow was on her back as she jumped down from the boulder, the metal of her new sword hissing in its sheath as she landed on top of the warg and stabbed it in the head.

The exiled king spun around, Orcrist aglow in his hand. His eyes then widened at the sight of her before he dropped his gaze to the warg at his feet which had been inches away from taking his head off and leaving the company kingless. He looked back up and Clarissa couldn't tell what he was feeling. Didn't much care at the moment either.

"Get behind the boulder, you judgemental idiots!"

She twirled her sword expertly, which glittered like ice, as she raced to cut down a warg that leapt upon the blond prince. The Shadow Walker pulled him to his feet a little too forcibly, as he jolted forward from the force unsteadily. She then turned to face the orcs that were inching closer and closer to the company.

"This way, you fools!" Gandalf then called out to the company as he emerged from the rock face behind them. They all looked back as he motioned them over before then springing into action and heading towards the cluster of stones. If they had listened when she had said it, they would have been in the hole by now, but _no._

One by one the dwarves and hobbit began to slide down into the hidden passageway, joining the wizard in the bottom of the pit, until there was only Thorin and Kíli left out of the group. The archer was still some twenty yards away, firing arrow after arrow at the advancing pack.

"Kíli!" Thorin bellowed.

Fenrir appeared suddenly as he tackled a warg that had been nearby the archer to the ground, teeth snapping as they fought for dominance and the lone archer dwarf quickly made for the boulder. Which left the Shadow Walker and her warg the only ones keeping the orc pack back. Her ears twitched again as she caught the distant sound of hoofs nearing.

She quickly turned around as a warg leapt at her. Spearing the large beast on her new blade, she let out a noise of strain as she held the beast aloft upon her sword. Warm, black blood came spraying down onto her clothes, hands, and the part of her hood that was pulled down over her face. She made a noise of disgust as she ripped the sword free and flung the creature to the side. She surely looked quite the sight now. That bath was most definitely needed, more so than ever.

"Nightingale!"

Gandalf's voice echoed through the air as he yelled at her, but Clarissa ignored it. Fenrir wasn't getting through the hole as there wasn't nearly enough room for him and she was most definitely not leaving him behind. A horn then sounded, and her head snapped to one side as she finally caught sight of Elrond and his group finally making their way across the rocky plains. Orc and warg alike were easily cut down by the elves and Clarissa quickly spun around once she realised that they were more than likely to cut _her _warg down too.

She spotted him some distance away, taking down another warg, his muzzle drenched in the black liquid that was warg and orc blood.

"**Katu Fen!**"

His head immediately snapped up, and he thundered across the plains until he came to a stop just behind her. She shielded him with as much of her body as she could, but it ultimately did nothing. No arrows were however shot at him, so Clarissa counted that as a win and as Elrond's horse moved closer, she sheathed her sword on her back once more, bent at the waist in a bow and brushed her hood off.

Curtsying was not for her, especially when in bloodied clothes. She reserved the curtsying for when she wore dresses and skirts, which was not very often considering that her lifestyle was not suited to such things. Unfortunate really as Clarissa did enjoy twirling in big flowy skirts. It was fun.

"Lord Elrond."

"It is not every day that I find an orc pack so close to my borders." His eyes flickered over to Fenrir behind her. "Nor a maiden with a warg."

Clarissa laughed as she straightened, tilting her head back to that she could actually meet the eyes of the elf talking to her. His eyes widened ever so slightly at the sight of her and something flickered across them so quickly that for a moment she briefly wondered if she had imagined it. Did he know her from before as Gandalf did? She was unlikely to get a straight answer from either of them, however, so she pushed it from her mind for the time being.

Still, tall men on tall horses. She was going to get a cramp in her neck if she was around other elves for too long. Curse her shortness, why did she have to stop growing at such a young age? Although, looking down at the company for too long would probably cause the same effects. Her poor neck was going to be wrecked by the end of the quest.

"I apologise." She then paused, before smiling a little too mischievously. "Although Mithrandir is to blame for the trouble."

"I see," Elrond said as though he had expected nothing else. "And where is Mithrandir?"

"He went down the pathway behind the rock face with a group of dwarves. He'll be arriving in Imladris sooner or later."

"Dwarves." The way he said it was as though he had been told a bunch of rowdy children had just arrived at his home. Not that far off of a description to her considering that they would no doubt be throwing food about the place, destroying his furniture to make firewood and jumping into his fountain stark naked.

For a king, Thorin wasn't very diplomatic. Far too proud for his own good. Perhaps that was why he had Balin at his side. Being thrown into jail over a necklace that he didn't care for hadn't been smart on his part and if Bilbo hadn't been there, they probably would have spent the full hundred years down in the cells.

"You wouldn't happen to have meat, would you? Dwarves don't really enjoy _greens." _

Elrond looked down at her and a brief smile twitched the corners of his lips. Clarissa blinked before realising that he no doubt already knew that from dealings with dwarves before and… She laughed.

Who knew that elves deemed stuck up by most would go and play a joke on their guests?

* * *

**Author's Note:** My history looks so odd. Elven menstruation. Medieval menstruation methods. Also, the twirly whirlies were in the extended cut of the last film if no-one knows what I'm talking about there. I hope I'm writing everyone properly… Let me know if I'm not otherwise!

If no-one has gathered yet either, Clarissa loves languages. If she knows it and can say it, a place will be referred to in its original language. Shadow Walkers have to learn a lot of languages over the years as they jump, especially Clarissa due to the number of languages on Earth. Names will be different. She picks the one that makes the most sense according to the situation. She's an elf, thus why she calls Gandalf Mithrandir, when though she knows his name is actually Olórin.

**Sindarin  
**Taur-nu-Fuin : mirkwood**  
**Orodruin : mount doom

**Black Speech  
**Katu : here


	10. Bhí Na Soilse Ag Scaladh Go Lonrach

**Author's Note: **Writer's block, shoo. It doesn't help that, yet again, I'm ill and have been curled up in bed for an entire week and a half by this point. At least I'm self-quarantined and have been since before my county went on lockdown. Oh well. I hope I can still provide a good chapter for all my lovely readers!

* * *

**Through the Valley of Shadows**

**Chapter Ten  
****Bhí Na Soilse Ag Scaladh Go Lonrach  
**_the lights shone bright_

**(Eärenya the 31****st**** of Lótessë, Third Age 2941. Imladris, Western Misty Mountains, Eriador, Middle Earth.)**

**Fingers **brushing across the rough rocky surface, Clarissa closed her eyes and inhaled deeply as something akin to an electric shock travelled through her body, followed by another, and another. It felt like a heartbeat. It felt alive. It felt like _magic. _The walls pulsated with power under her touch and she gasped as it pulsated through her, and then into her, filling her to the brim with power and light so consuming it felt as though she were bathing in pure starlight.

It was a sensation similar to what she felt whenever she would twist the shadows into doing her bidding, but also completely different.

The shadows were so cold that they burnt her from the inside out, whilst the magic that filled the last homely house east of the sea made it feel as though she were stood in the centre of the universe, surrounded by a million burning stars.

It felt almost as though she was… _home._

Almost.

Something was amiss, of course, a large centrepiece missing from a massive puzzle that she hadn't been able to work out no matter how hard she tried. None of her memories had come back of a family lost. She wondered if Lothlorien or Taur-nu-Fuin would feel the same as Imladris did. The mystery of her missing life on Arda continued.

She sighed as she let her hand drop from the wall and land by her side.

Mismatched eyes then swept across her surroundings and Clarissa couldn't help the smile, wide and bright, that stretched across her face as she took in the sight of Imladris in all of its elven glory. It was incredibly beautiful, everything she had ever imagined it would be and then so much more. The movies had done it little justice. There was no feasible way that anything in her world would have been able to capture the magic that the Shadow Walker felt brush across her skin and saw dancing before her very eyes.

It was—

_(The leaves of the Twilight glistened like stars, shining under the light of the rising moon. She laughed in the carefree way only a child could as she danced around the tree trunk to the music that drifted from the flute held against her mother's lips. Green eyes shone with amusement as Clarissa twirled, jumped, and spun as though she were a woodland sprite.)_

She shook her head, clearing the fog of memories.

It was the same sensation she would feel whenever she was near the Twilight tree.

Gandalf had been his usual cryptic, vague self when he had answered her questions, but Clarissa fully expected to find the answers she wanted for the simple fact that the wizard in grey had told her that she eventually would. She knew him to be many different things, but a liar was not one of those things.

_("_He _knows one of them have returned.")_

The only question then left would be if she would _like _the answers she would uncover.

She let her legs carry her through the many halls of Imladris, absentmindedly following the distant chatter of disgruntled dwarves. She had yet to properly introduce herself to the company as, as soon as she had arrived, an elven maid had appeared to lead her off to a private room where she could clean up and change. Although she had wanted to change into the dress that had been left on the bed for her, she had instead changed into another set of her own clothes as she had no way of knowing how long the company would stay.

Book canon or movie canon.

It was better for her to be safe than sorry, regardless of how soft and pretty the dress was.

She had a promise to keep, after all, a promise she had made to her mother. Granted at the time Clarissa had not known how true the promise would become but that was in the past. Her mother had died, and she would keep the promise her younger self had very seriously pinkie swore during one of their movie marathons.

Clarissa would change what could be changed, save the lives that could be changed regardless of how the dwarves reacted to her presence in their company. She knew where they were going and where they would end up. If they refused to have her in the company, they couldn't stop her from following behind.

It was a heavyweight on her shoulders, but all Shadow Walkers carried that burden.

They simply couldn't act on what they knew.

It was a unique situation she had found herself in and she couldn't help but wonder if her mother had ever known of the fictional version of Arda before she had walked across its earth herself. Clarissa imagined that she hadn't, not when she had reacted so strongly to the events that would play across their television screen or the words written in their worn copies of the books. No, she imagined that her mother had only discovered Tolkien's work _after _having already been to Arda.

The Shadow Walker came to a sudden halt as something ricocheted off her kneecaps and fell to the stone floor with a yelp.

She blinked in surprise as she looked down at the sight of a young boy rubbing his forehead. The rounded tips that poked through his hair revealed him to be human and there was only one human boy that she knew would be in Imladris during the year they were currently in. His head then tilted up to meet her gaze, and she found herself staring into the grey eyes of Aragorn, future High King of Dúnedain.

Who was currently just a boy who had been running through the hallways and had crashed into her?

"You should watch where you are running, young Estel."

She extended a hand to help him up, but he didn't seem to notice it, his eyes blown wide as he stared up at her face from his position on the floor. He reminded still for so long that Clarissa worried for a moment that he had noticed a few screws loose and she opened her mouth to say something else when—

"It's you!"

His words rendered her silent, and her mouth closed again.

"I knew I'd see you again!"

Again.

While it was possible that he had somehow gotten her confused with another elf, she found it unlikely that there was another with her _unique _set of eyes. He could have seen the evergreen of her left eye, or the ice blue of her right before, but she found it unlikely that he would have seen the two together on another. Which meant that Clarissa would jump further into the past sometime in her own personal future and somehow come across Estel.

An encounter that would leave enough of an impression that he would remember her face.

"I'm afraid I've never met you before."

Estel frowned before his eyes then bloomed, and he grinned as he hopped to his feet. He extended a hand. "I'm Estel. You helped mother and me escape!"

Her eyes widened even further even as her hand automatically rose to shake his smaller hand. It was hard for her not to imagine him as he would be in the future. Tall and mighty. The last High King. Someone who would have to embark on an important quest to destroy the most dangerous object in existence.

She had long since accepted the fact that she would still be young when the next big plot came around.

When that time came, would Gandalf again bring her into the fold of things? Would the Shadow Walker become the Tenth Walker? She mentally shook her head and allowed none of her thoughts to show on her face. There was enough for her to deal with at the moment that she couldn't worry about the distant future just yet.

"You're Nightingale, right?"

"I am."

He grinned again. "I read all about Yucalëedur, so I know that you live all jumbled up."

She couldn't help the laugh that slipped past her lips. "That's one way of describing it, yes."

"Are you going to see ada?"

"I am." She smiled down at him. "Would you be kind enough to lead the way, Estel?"

His lips twisted into another smile as he tugged on her hand and lead her through the corridors. Estel's voice bounced off the stone walls as he told her all about his life in Imladris, his head turning back now and again as though to check she was still there, even though his fingers were tightly grasping her hand in his own. Every time she would smile as his eyes focused on her face and he would beam, a faint pink tint brushing across his cheeks before he then turned around to focus on the path in front of them.

It was cute.

It was also slightly concerning.

Clarissa was no stranger to people taking a fancy to her, simply a stranger to returning those affections, but she knew that Estel would grow to be Aragorn, who would marry Arwen. Who, from what she could recall, he had had a crush on since he was a child? She could only hope that her actions in the future, and his past, hadn't changed that.

But, then again, he was only a child, and children had many crushes throughout their childhoods.

Her own crushes had usually been on the characters from books and movies, and one long-lasting crush on Bryle, a thief who had taught her tricks of the trade. His wife had been very amused by her crush, despite her own embarrassment over the fact. Eleanor had also been a thief of her own worth and had too brought Clarissa under her wing for a time.

"Ada!"

Estel's voice carried in the wind as they entered the hall and Clarissa kept her focus on the boy still clutching her hand as a number of eyes suddenly focused on them—on her. The room was incredible, much like everything else she had seen. An architecture that was both gothic and art nouveau at the same time. Bright and airy, with arches and swirls, and candles that somehow managed not to flicker out from the open-aired view of the valley outside.

"Estel, I see you have found our wayward guest." Elrond's voice was humorous as he looked to the pair from his position at the head of the table.

"We were beginning to worry that we had lost you," Gandalf chimed in quickly after, "my dear Nightingale."

Whispers and mutters soon followed as the company put the name to the face that had been previously hidden behind a layer of black fabric. Clarissa said nothing as they stared. Examined what they had been unable to see before. Eyes swept up and down her frame. The numerous braids among her loose white-blonde hair and the small silver rings that decorated the sides of her long, pointed ears. The metal cuff attached to the tip of her right.

Her appearance was a mash-up of distinct cultures and she most certainly did not fit into what they knew of elves.

She smiled widely; her fangs visible to everyone that looked her way. "I apologise. Imladris is simply too beautiful for me to rush through it. And besides," her eyes then moved, focusing on the cold, cold blue of Thorin Oakenshield's eyes. "I didn't think my presence would be welcomed."

His jaw tightened and his eyes grew colder, but the king said nothing.

Gandalf smiled at her. "Nonsense my dear, without you, we would have never made it."

She didn't bother to correct the wizard, for she knew that they would have made it with or without her help. Her eyes swept across the company, and she watched their reactions. Ori flinched away from her stare, seemingly unnerved by her eyes. Fíli was simply natural. She could see nothing in his eyes.

Clarissa then turned to Bilbo and her eyebrows pulled down slightly, as she again felt as though something was amiss with the burglar. However, she was feeling mischievous, so she brushed the feeling off once again and pressed a hand against her chest as she slightly bowed her head to the hobbit.

"Well meet Bilbo, son of Belladonna."

He flustered, his hands fidgeting with the napkin in his lap. "W-well meet."

"You may call me Clarissa," she winked, and the hobbit's eyes widened.

"That's not a very elven name."

She then blinked before she turned her head, glancing over her shoulder towards the voice who had laughed as he said it. It was, of course, one of the princes. She had been surprised by his lack of beard when she had first seen the company. Surprised that he took after his movie counterpart. She had had a crush on Aidan Turner, after all.

"I would imagine not." Her eyes swept over his form, lingering on his features before she then rose once again to meet his eyes. "I'm only half, after all." It was one the tip of her tongue to say something else, to comment on his lack of a beard but she refused to do things that would put even more of a black mark against her name. She couldn't do anything about her race nor the dwarves' feelings towards that, but she could control her words and her actions.

"You are who we meet in the woods, then?"

"I am," she replied as she turned to Balin. He was the most diplomatic out of the dwarves and while she could see lingering distrust in his eyes, there was none of the hatred and disgust that was visible in the eyes of Dwalin, Óin, Glóin, or Dori. Or Thorin. She laughed silently to herself over the fact that it was the old men that hated her over the simple fact of her ears.

"Estel, I believe it is time for your lessons."

The hand grasping her own tightened and Clarissa looked down at the future king. "Can't I stay?"

She smiled and crouched down so that she was level with him before Elrond could reply to his comment. "You mustn't miss lessons, Estel. However, you can find me afterward. I promise that I will still be here."

His eyes flickered over her. "Promise?"

Clarissa didn't know if pinkie promises were a thing in Arda, but she could make it one. She held her pinkie up and was only slightly surprised when Estel followed suit, his smaller finger hooking around her own. She shook them once and then twice, then Estel took over for the last.

"Okay. You can't break your promise now. You told me pinkie promises are binding."

She laughed. "I would never lie about something like that."

He nodded. Then with a quick sweep of his eyes across the room, he leant forward and pressed a kiss against her cheek before rushing out of the room, laughing to himself as he disappeared around the corner. She blinked in surprise before rising to her feet, shaking her head in amusement as she did.

"I thank you, Lady Nightingale." Elrond smiled. "We have not been able to get Estel to attend his lessons since he found out that you had arrived."

She moved forward and sat down in the only available seat, which was beside Gandalf and opposite Thorin. "It wasn't a problem, Lord Elrond. Estel is a lovely boy." Her attention then focused on him. "It's important for him to learn what his lessons have to offer him after all."

He nodded, and she could see that he knew that she knew. "Yes." He took a sip from the glass in front of him. "I have heard that you too found a sword in the Troll's hoard."

"I did."

"Might I see it?"

Clarissa reached a hand behind her back, the shadows that cloaked her sheath evaporating as she pulled the sword out and held it out in front of her, balancing it on the palms of her hands. Her eyes swept across the words that she hadn't been able to decode before she then leant forward, offering it to the older more knowledgeable elf.

"I believe it's Ringil."

"Yes." The sword was taken from her grasp and Clarissa watched as Elrond examined it carefully like one would a fragile piece of china. His fingertips barely brushed across the blade as he looked over the words. "It is no surprise that it would be you that found it, considering the family history."

She blinked.

Then swallowed back the questions that followed as there were simply too many eyes on her for her to word them currently.

Ringil had belonged to Fingolfin, one of the High Kings of Noldor. She knew the family lineage like the back of her hand because she had simply found everyone attached fascinating. She had stayed up for hours rereading the snippets where they would appear in books and had devoured the Silmarillion.

Ringil was held back out to her, and she swallowed again as she sheathed the sword on her back once again, wrapping the shadows around it to conceal it once again from sight. She didn't think to ask about the words etched across its blade as her mind was still spinning from finding out that somehow, she was related to its original owner.

"Ah, Glorfindel."

She stiffened like a plank. Then ever so slowly she turned her head to glance over her shoulder. Then her eyes widened as she took in the sight of her favourite character in all of the books, despite his lack of a presence in a majority of them. She had been so extremely annoyed when he had been replaced by Arwen in the movies.

He was…

Beyond words.

The sun shone around his head like a literal halo and made his long, hip-length golden hair glimmer. His face was fair and young, his appearance concealing the age she knew he held. Beautiful beyond words. He stood tall and straight, towering over them all from his seven-foot statue.

She then exhaled sharply as she stared into the light reflected in his eyes. The light of the two trees, Laurelin and Telperion. It was beautiful and enchanting. It was also painfully familiar. It was a light in his eyes that she recalled seeing in her mothers. A light she saw in her own in the reflection of a mirror or the calm waters of a river. A light that couldn't possibly be held captive in her gaze as she had never stood in the presence of the Two Trees that had been destroyed thousands of years ago.

He stared back at her.

Then he smiled.

The rush of blood that pooled in her cheeks was noticeable to even herself. She could feel the heat that radiated from her. His smile grew joyful and boyish in nature. In two quick steps he was in front of her and she could do nothing as he bent slightly, a strand of her hair taken to wrap around his finger.

"It is lovely to meet you, Nightingale."

His voice was baritone, and it dripped like honey off his tongue.

_'Oh Valar.'_

She was in _so much _trouble.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Such a short chapter for such a long wait. Writer's block is a pain in the backside. Hopefully, the next chapter will write itself in a matter of days instead of weeks. I'm still a little _meh _about this whole chapter, but oh well. Clarissa's related to the line of Finwë. How? That will be explored later. For now…. Glorfindel!


	11. Luíonn Na Cuimhní Ina Hintinn

**Author's Note: **Why have these last few chapters been so hard to get started? I've rewritten this chapter about seven times and it's never started the same. I don't know if I even like it _now_! Ugh. Sorry to everyone who has been patiently waiting for the next chapter in Clarissa's busy, busy life.

* * *

**Through the Valley of Shadows**

**Chapter Eleven  
****Luíonn Na Cuimhní Ina Hintinn**_  
the memories dwell in her mind_

**(Eärenya the 20****th**** of Lótessë, Third Age 2941. Imladris Library, Western Misty Mountains, Eriador, Middle Earth.)**

**In **the late nineteen eighties, Clarissa had jumped to Switzerland. In terms of adventure and such, it had been rather uneventful, but she had still found herself walking across the country for several weeks, absorbing the sights. It had all been so very remarkable to see. She, however, had been most taken with the Abbey Library of Saint Gall and still remembered how starstruck she had been by the beauty of it all, the feeling of wonder that had filled her as she had looked out at the extensive number of books that sat on the many, many shelves.

She felt much the same now, as she did back then, as she stood frozen at the entrance of the library of Imladris.

It was the biggest library she had ever seen before.

Clarissa lingered just in front of the stone archway, slowly turning around on the spot, her jaw just that slightest bit agape as she stared in wonder at the ethereal majesty surrounding her. Sweeping, graceful walls and windows. Bookcases that reached from the floor up to the ceiling. Thousands upon thousands of books, with millions of copies of the same letters, rearranged into their own unique orders, spines simply awaiting someone to come along to crack them open and devour their words.

There was so much knowledge just a fingertip away.

She exhaled, a breathless noise that slipped past her lips, the inner bookworm in her ecstatic at the idea of curling up in a quiet corner with a cup of tea as she read through stacks and stacks of history and adventure, of filling her brain with so much more about Arda than what had ever been available to her back home.

"Will you be lingering under the arch all day?"

She startled at the gruff voice, at the familiar sound of English that echoed in the air, a language that she had only heard in the past three years when she herself had spoken it. When she would ramble on and on about something, talking to herself as she travelled with Fenrir, who could understand her perfectly no matter what language fell from her lips.

Then she spun around to face the elven man who had managed to sneak up behind her.

His long black hair had been pulled into a low ponytail at the nape of his neck, his grey eyes narrowed in disapproval as he gave her smaller frame a quick once over. In his arms laid a small tower of books and scrolls that Clarissa could read, as they were written in Sindarin, unlike her inability to read the common tongue when written down. She hoped that somewhere in the vast collection of books that surrounded her there were dictionaries or something similar that would get her started on learning written common tongue.

Clarissa said nothing as she stared at him wide-eyed, at the mysterious elven stranger who spoke her language. Then again, she reasoned to herself, her mother had travelled to Arda when she was younger herself so it made sense that there would be others who would be able to speak it, especially the elves who hoarded knowledge as the dwarves did with gold.

He sighed and seemed to roll his eyes mentally. "Yes, I imagine that it is surprising to find someone who speaks your rather… _unique _tongue, but that is no reason to forgot how to speak entirely."

Her teeth clicked together. "As someone ever told you that you're a cunús before?"

There was silence for what felt like forever, as Clarissa narrowed her eyes in disbelief as she had always hated rude people. She knew the reasoning behind Thorin and most of the company's rudeness, but that still didn't mean that she would blindly accept it once they were all on the road together. The mysterious English-speaking elf walked past her and she caught the faintest glimpse of a smirk before he stopped at a crowded table in the corner of the room, one that was overflowing with books and scrolls and other such bits and bobs.

The books in his arms made a loud _thud _as he dropped them onto the wooden surface.

"Emelia often found immense joy in repeatedly telling me so, and I see I can expect the same from her daughter," he then replied, now speaking in the common tongue that Clarissa had gotten used to hearing every day for the past three years, instead of her childhood tongue of English. Irish had been something she learnt as she went, growing up in the hillsides of County Wicklow, as English and Mandarin had been the most spoken languages on Earth at the time.

Thus, it had been those two languages her mother had focused on teaching her.

"You knew my mother?"

The man paused ever so momentarily as he noted the past tense before he then refocused his attention on the scrolls that were open and laid out before him. Clarissa moved further into the library, unable to help the way that her head turned to examine all the mysterious books in a vast amount of languages that she hoped to one day be able to read.

"I knew Emelia for many years, she opened my eyes to much and saved my life on more than one occurrence."

Clarissa smiled at the fond tone he used to speak about her mother with. A tone most people adopted when recalling memories of old friends. It was the same for her whenever she would recall Ashleigh, a girl who had grown up in the town nearby where Clarissa and her mother had lived. Ashleigh had been Clarissa's only friend growing up. She had ended up moving away while Clarissa had been in the thirteenth century, and she still remembered clearly how distraught she had been when she had returned and found out.

"I haven't heard much about her life here on Arda."

He looked at her from out the corner of his eye, as she continued to slowly rotate around the lower floor of the library, her fingertips briefly hovering across the spines of books as she attempted to guess what laid within each of them. As she tried to figure out their stories and their secrets from just the titles she could and couldn't read.

"I imagine it difficult to know that a part of you is missing but unable to reach it, as though you are attempting to capture the moon in your grasp from the reflection of water."

She blinked, before then laughing softly at the rather poetic description. "That's one way to describe it, I suppose." Her free hand then rose briefly, fingertips brushing across the concealed necklace around her neck. "How well did you know my mother? I've met only a few that knew her."

His eyes were on her back, she could feel them as she stared at the books before her. "Well enough for Emelia to have named her firstborn after me. Her son."

A small metal pin dropping to the stone floor would have been heard as silence suddenly befell the library. Clarissa inhaled sharply, her eyes widening, her heart having jumped up into her throat. Her mother had had a son, which meant… which meant that somewhere out in the world Clarissa had a brother.

She turned around slowly, as she stared at the elf that had given her more questions than anything else. Her mother hadn't just lost a husband, she had also lost a son. Suddenly her overprotectiveness of Clarissa at times made so much more sense. She couldn't imagine the pain her mother must have been in, the strength she must have had to push through that pain to greet the morning with a smile each time the sun rose above the horizon and raise her daughter.

The pain she must have felt whenever a younger Clarissa had wished for a brother at Christmas.

"Well meet Clarissa, daughter of Emelia." He raised his hand to his chest and inclined his head. "My name is Ornion."

"Silas."

"Tree, wood, forest." Ornion waved a hand in the air. "It all means the same in the end."

She almost laughed.

All this time she had believed Silas to be the name of her father, but instead, she had been recalling her brother. She thought she had at least remembered the name of her missing family member, of her forgotten father, but instead, she had found that there was another that she couldn't remember, another whose name was Silas.

"Silas is my brother," she stated, using present tense to assess wherever her brother was still around.

If he was out there somewhere on Middle-Earth where she could _find _him. Find someone out there that knew who she was, knew her history and where she came from. Someone to give her the answers she wanted. If there was anyone out there that was to know everything that she wanted to know, surely it would be her family.

Ornion said nothing about her stumble and from the knowing glint in his eyes, he noted the tense. "Indeed."

She couldn't help the _hope _and joy that begun to build up inside her as she realised that she wasn't alone. That the brother she had wished for forever truly existed and was somewhere out there, somewhere where she would find him and meet him. He was real. Her big brother whose name was the only thing she had ever remembered.

She wasn't the last Ryder.

"Digging for secrets, Lady Nightingale?"

Clarissa slowly glanced over her shoulder, her stomach flip-flopping as though she were a schoolgirl as she spotted the amused smirk on Glorfindel's face. It was the second time she had met him now, having practically fled from sight after dinner to find the library for some answers. And, of course, fleeing from the elf that was too handsome for her wellbeing.

She fully expected Thorin to hunt her down later that night to answer questions that _he _had, as she knew what Gandalf was like, vague and cryptic at the best of times. She also expected another to search around for her, a little boy with hearts in his eyes whenever he looked at her.

Hearts she imagined were in her eyes currently.

The golden-haired hero had always been her favourite, after all, a childhood crush that had never really faded.

Glorfindel moved until he was stood before Clarissa, and she inhaled breathing in the sight of him as he leant forward into her personal space, as she stared down at her and she stared up into those impossibly electrically eyes that glimmered with light like the stars she watched at night. He stared at her as though she was the moon itself and her heart skipped a beat as fingers gently brushed across her cheek, as his attention momentarily flickered to her lips that momentarily parted at the attention.

"If you two are quite done, my library is not the place for _flirting." _

Clarissa quickly turned her head away, a bright red flush to her face as she remembered the librarian and took a few steps backwards, Glorfindel's hand dropping to his side. Ornion had said flirting as though it was something disgusting, like a child said cooties, and if she weren't so embarrassed, she would have found it amusing.

Glorfindel did, judging by his smirk. "Don't be jealous, Orn."

The librarian scoffed. "It is bad enough that there are dwarves lurking about the halls. If you wish to flirt, take her elsewhere."

"Well, I do believe we are being kicked out, Lady Nightingale." He then held out a hand towards her and she swallowed at the devilishly handsome smirk that then crossed his face. "Would you care to join me in a stroll around Imladris' grounds?"

She briefly chewed on the flesh of her bottom lip as she glanced up at him from beneath her eyelashes. She then placed her hand into his palm, his fingers instantly curling around her own. It felt… right, her hand in his own. As though it had been made for her, her fingers moulding perfectly between his own.

"Why, I couldn't think of anything I would enjoy more, my Lord Glorfindel."

Ornion groaned in disgust at her words, and Glorfindel laughed. She smiled in response, finding herself thinking that she wished to be able to hear his laugh forever. He said nothing as he led her outside into the gardens and Clarissa found herself simply staring at him from the corner of her eyes.

From the small smirk on his lips, he knew what she was doing.

Once they had arrived in the gardens, Clarissa found herself once again starstruck as she stared out at the beauty of the garden. It was like something straight out of a fairy tale, something that she had once imagined the _Secret Garden _to look like and she fully expected to see fairies dancing around the flowers and across the surface of the nearby pond.

She could see why Bilbo Baggins would one day spend all his time reading in the gardens when it looked as it did.

"It is beautiful."

"It is," Glorfindel replied. "I gathered that I would either find you here or in the library, and it seems that I would be correct."

Clarissa bit her lip to stop herself from replying, from questioning how well the golden-haired hero knew her that he knew where to go to find her. Clarissa had never met someone who already knew her. Now it seemed to be a common occurrence that kept repeating itself. First with Gandalf and now with Glorfindel. It was a possibility for a Shadow Walker, of course, walking in the past as they did but Clarissa had still never met someone out of order before.

It was strange, to find people who knew her before she knew them herself, but she had a feeling that Glorfindel knew her in a different way than Gandalf and even Elrond did.

"I have known you almost my entire life, Mirerynien, but now I look into your eyes and see such youth."

Clarissa exhaled, her eyelashes fluttering at the _rightness _of the name. She felt it was a part of her as much as Clarissa was. Glorfindel's hands then cupped the sides of her face and she stared up into his ancient eyes and her heart skipped a beat at the overwhelming amount of love that glimmered within. They were living in backwards, like River Song and the Doctor.

He then smiled as though he could read her thoughts. "You told me to tell you… _Spoilers." _

She really hated herself at times.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Was that short? The ending fell short and I still don't like it. It's been almost three months now however since I last uploaded and I feel so bad for my viewers, but as I've mentioned before, I can't force myself to write. I hope that Glorfindel made up for the wait, however, he has always been my favourite character despite his lack of a presence. Damn you movies!

Ornion was originally going to be named something beginning with Taur, for forest, but I just keep remembering Tauriel. Thus, Ornion was born instead.

**Irish:  
**Cunús : bastard


End file.
